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BY r> 



THOMAS AK JANVIER 

AUTHOR C»F 
"THE AZTEC TREASURE-HOUSE" ETC. 



WITH PORTRAIT 
AND ILLUSTRATIONS 




HARPER &• BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 

NEW YORK AND LONDON 

MCMXI V 



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Books by 
THOMAS A. JANVIER 

[PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS] 

At the Casa Napoleon . . PostSvo net $1.25 
The Aztec Tkeasube-House. Ill'd 

Post 8vo, net 1.50 

The Uncle of an Angel, etc. lU'd Post 8vo 1 . 25 

In Old New York, Ill'd . . . Post 8vo 1.75 

The Pasbinq op Thomas. Ill'd . . Post Svo 1 . 25 

In the Sabgasso Sea Post Svo 1.25 

In Great Waters. Ill'd . . . Post Svo 1.25 
Legends of the City of Mexico. Ill'd 

Post Svo, net 1.30 

Santa Fe's Partner. Ill'd . . . PostSvo 1.50 

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Post Svo, net 1.20 
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Svo, Half Leather, net 2.60 

[PUBLISHED ELSEWHERE] 
An Embassy to Provence 
Stories of Old New Spain 
Color Studies 

Color Studies and a Mexican Campaign 
The Mexican Guide 



COPYRIGHT, I890. 1891, 1892. 1914. BY HARPER & BROTHERS 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
PUBLISHED JUNE. 1914 



JUN~8l9f4 

©Ci,A376278 



k^ 



/ 



II 



TO 
A. G. H. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

L At the Casa Napoleon i 

II. The Efferati Family 60 

III. The Episode of the Marques de Valdeflores . . 103 

IV. Colonel Withersby's "Strike" ...... 144 

V. Monsieur le Docteur Theophile 181 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Thomas A. Janvier F: 

"Why, It's Perfectly Delightful, Jack" . . Faang 

He was a Gentle, Kindly Old Boy .... 

Sometimes Prudence Would Find Mrs. Morti- 
mer's Eyes Fixed upon Her 

Signor Efferati Tendered to Mr. O'Hallahan 
Two Dollars 

"Ah, Vittoria, Why Didst Thou Stay My 
Avenging Arm?" 

"See, It is from Us that This New York 
Receives Its Glorious Gift!" 

When This Brilliant Name was Written upon 
the Register, there Ran Through That 
Establishment a Thrill 

Colonel Withersby, Promoter of Railways . 



onttspiece 
p. 6 V^ 



44 



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64 



92 



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104 ' 

116 I' 



PREFACE 

IT was not a house of phantasy, this cosmopolitan 
Casa Napoleon, but a very definite haven for wan- 
derers of Latin origin which for several years opened 
hospitable doors upon a side -street near lower Fifth 
Avenue. To this house it was the custom of Mr. Janvier 
to come, and it was during dinners which he planned 
with supreme art that his close but kindly observation 
garnered suggestions which ripened under the sunshine 
of his humorous fancy into the fruition of this book. 

At the Casa Napoleon adds another picture to Mr. 
Janvier's interpretations of New York, which he loved 
peculiarly, although his birthplace was Philadelphia, his 
blood was of the Midi, and old London was always held 
close in his affection. 

Thomas Allibone Janvier was born in Philadelphia, 
July 1 6, 1849, ^^6 son of Francis de Haes and Emma 
Newbold Janvier, the descendant of Huguenot forbears 
from the South of France, whose racial characteristics 
he retained so clearly that he was greeted as one of the 
soil when he first visited Provence. From 1870 to 1881 
he was chiefly occupied with editorial work upon various 
Philadelphia newspapers; after that he devoted himself 
to literary work, and New York became his home, with 
the exception of travels in Mexico, a long stay in the 
South of France, and many visits abroad. 

When Mr. Janvier came to New York, about 1881, to 

xi 



PREFACE 

enter definitely upon a literary career, there was some- 
thing very like a Latin Quarter in the neighborhood of 
Washington Square. To the south there was a French 
Quarter, where various simple, old-fashioned French 
restaurants attracted artists; to the north there was an 
artist colony. There was the old Studio Building at 51 
West Tenth Street, and across the street in a rear court- 
yard was a little house which was the home of the once 
famous Tile Club. To the west stretched old Greenwich 
Village. The simple and honest Bohemianism of the Quar- 
ter gave a color to its life which attracted Mr, Janvier, 
and an early result was the production of his tales of 
artist life, familiarly known as the Ivory Black Stories. 
They appeared in the magazines and afterward in his 
first book, entitled Color Studies, published in 1885. 
They attracted attention immediately on account of 
their warmth, richness, humor and felicity of diction, 
qualities which always distinguished Mr. Janvier's work. 
His style was as unusual as his superb personal appear- 
ance. His feeling for effects was that of a Frenchman 
rather than an American, or, more definitely, he showed 
a happy and glowing imagination characteristic of the 
Midi. 

Mr. Janvier rejoiced in color, and it seemed natural 
that he should presently betake himself to Mexico and 
to our Southwest. One result was his Mexican Guide 
Booky published in 1887, which was called a new discov- 
ery of Mexico. The picturesque history and environment, 
which appealed to him so strongly, found ample expres- 
sion in his romance. The Aztec Treasure-House, and in his 
Stories of Old New Spain. 

A few years later, the sunshine in his blood responding 
to the sunshine of the Midi drew him to the South of 
France. There his affinity was recognized, and he was 
adopted by the poets and writers, whom he quickly 

?fii 



PREFACE 

learned to know. He became a warm friend of Mistral, 
the Provencal poet, and he was made presently an hon- 
orary member of the Felibrige, that inspiring and honor- 
able society of poets and men of letters. 

In 1878 he had married Catharine Ann Drinker, who 
shared to the full his devotion to art and letters. While 
they were living at Saint Remy de Provence their friend- 
ship with Felix Gras brought them an opportunity of 
reading the manuscript of his Reds of the Midi. It 
was through their appreciation that the work of Gras 
was brought to the attention of an American editor 
and his books, admirably rendered into English by Mrs. 
Janvier, were made known to the English-speaking world. 
Mr. Janvier wrote of the Midi with an understanding and 
an enjoyment which, perhaps, no English-speaking writer 
has equalled. It was this same delightfully human zest 
that was felt in his genius for friendship and also in the 
quaint seriousness of his devotion to the gourmet's high- 
est arts. 

His life in the Midi yielded various magazine articles 
and stories, all characterized by intimate appreciation. 
Among the books of this time were An Embassy to Prov- 
ence and The Christmas Kalends of Provence. He spent 
three years (from 1894 to 1897) in his beloved Midi. 

From 1897 to 1900 he lived for most of the time in 
England, deeply interested always in old London. Later 
his home was in New York, with the exception of frequent 
visits abroad. The attraction which the past of New York 
held for him found expression in his book entitled. In 
Old New York, published in 1894. 

In 1898 he returned to the vein of pure romance 
illustrated in The Aztec Treasure -House and published 
In the Sargasso Sea. His interest in his adopted home 
and his intimate knowledge of its history was shown 
again in The Dutch Founding of New York, published 

xiii 



PREFACE 

in 1903, and also in his life of Henry Hudson, pub- 
lished in 1909. In this field his contribution to Amer- 
ican history was very definite and serious. His later 
books were Legends of Mexico, published in 19 10, and 
From the South of France, published in 1913. Mr. Jan- 
vier's rich productiveness is illustrated not only in the 
list of his books, but also in the sustained quality of 
his numerous contributions to Harper's Magazine and 
other periodicals. It was on June 18, 1913, in New 
York, that he finally laid aside a pen which he had used 
always with dignity and honor. 

Mr. Janvier's style was absolutely individual. The 
mellowness and quaintness of his expressions showed no 
sign of the care which he expended upon the choice of the 
right word. He was a stylist in so far as felicity of diction, 
and the selection of the best possible word always seemed 
to him deserving of infinite painstaking. He worked 
slowly, but the word and the phrase when they had satis- 
fied his finely critical judgment showed no trace of ped- 
antry and left nothing to be added. His themes included 
artist life, the rich sunshine of the Midi, the picturesque- 
ness and adventure of Mexico legends, the romantic in 
history, and the earlier and quainter years of New York. 
Mr. Janvier honored his craft, and, taking the art of writ- 
ing as seriously as he did, he maintained always the best 
traditions of the literary artist. His punctiliousness and 
conscientiousness and his keen sense of honor were im- 
pressed upon all those who knew him. In his attitude 
toward his work, in his style, and in the rich quality of 
his personal expression the place which he made for 
himself in letters and in his wide cosmopolitan circle of 
friends was absolutely individual. 

Ripley Hitchcock. 

New York, May, 1914, 



AT THE CASA NAPOLEON 



AT THE CASA NAPOLEON 




:N the matter of the name there had 
been a compromise. Madame, whose 
birthplace was Toulouse, and whose 
love for the Corsican dynasty that 
had ruled her native France amount- 
ed to adoration, was hotly for calling 
their establishment the Hotel Napoleon. Don An- 
astasio, on the other hand — being so devotedly at- 
tached to his native country that he had been fairly 
whirled out of it by a revolution in which he had en- 
gaged for its betterment, and having, moreover, an 
eye for a name attractive to his fellow Spanish 
Americans — ^was equally hotly for calling it the Casa 
Mexicana. 

Now the voting rights of the parties in interest — 
experience on the one side, capital on the other — were 
very nicely balanced, Madame had been engaged 
for five years in keeping a small hotel in South 
Fifth Avenue. It had been a flourishing hotel, well 
thought of and well frequented by her fellow-country- 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

men sojourning in New York; and she had flourished 
with it. But what with the unannounced departure 
of certain of her lodgers who left behind them large 
unpaid bills, and a fire that had wrought havoc with 
her uninsured furniture, and the inconsiderate sick- 
ness and death of her husband — it had been a mar- 
riage of convenience. Monsieur had been her cook — 
her fortunes of a sudden changed direfully. She was 
plunged, in short, from a very reasonable height of 
prosperity into a depth of adversity that she believed 
at the moment to be nothing less than bottomless. 
All that remained to her was her well-earned knowl- 
edge of how a hotel should be kept; but that she 
could make this knowledge practically valuable by 
obtaining another hotel, and keeping it, seemed to 
her in her despairing state a hopeless impossibility. 
It was at this stage of proceedings that Don 
Anastasio, being then freshly exiled from Mexico, 
made to Madame a formal offer of his heart, his 
hand, and the rather tidy sum of silver dollars that 
he had been lucky enough to save out of the wreck of 
his revolution and had brought with him into his 
banishment. They would be married, he said, and 
they would found a hotel that among hotels would 
become glorious and memorable. "Marriage," he 
declared, "was a natural right enjoyed by man," 
which fact, he pointed out, was set forth in the 
second law of the first book of the Siete Partidas of 
Don Alonzo the Wise, King of Castile; and in the 
introduction to the fourth book of that imperishable 
work, he added, it was written: "This order of mat- 
rimony was by God's own self established, and for 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

this reason is it the most noble and the most honor- 
able of the Seven Sacraments of the Holy Church. 
And therefore," Don Anastasio quoted in triumphant 
conclusion, "it should be kept and honored, because 
it is the first sacrament that was made and ordained 
by God Himself in Paradise — ^which Paradise hath 
ever since remained marked out as its natural abid- 
ing-place and home." Don Anastasio had been bred 
a lawyer; and of all his law-books none pleased him 
so well as the Siete Partidas, In it, he declared, and 
with justice, was to be found the whole sum of human 
wisdom. 

Had Madame manifested a disposition to reject 
his suit, Don Anastasio was prepared with a further 
strong array of quotations from the Siete Partidas 
that must inevitably have proved convincing. But 
Madame was too sincerely grateful to him for ex- 
tricating her from her difficulties to manifest any 
more hesitation in accepting his offer than the seemly 
decorum of a widow of a husband of convenience re- 
quired. And so, these perfunctory scruples being 
set aside without King Alonzo's assistance, she 
yielded to Don Anastasio's combined lover-like and 
business-like persuasions easily. 

Don Anastasio was a personable man, tall, com- 
manding, dignified, and exhibiting at all times a 
gravely courteous air that would have done credit 
to a count. Madame — short, trimly rounded, brisk, 
and cheery to a degree — was not in the least digni- 
fied. But Madame was delightful — as was plain to 
anybody with half an eye for what a plump little 
French widow should be. As for her good nature, 

2 3 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

it was as lasting as a summer day is long. There- 
fore these two made a well-looking couple when 
Madame, throwing aside her mourning before it had 
even begun to grow rusty, blossomed out once more 
into the most lively array of colors and became Don 
Anastasio's wife. In the upper circles of Franco- 
American and Spanish-American society, resident 
in South Fifth Avenue and Macdougal Street, and 
thereabouts, the wedding made quite a stir. 

It was in the days immediately preceding the wed- 
ding that the compromise was reached in regard to 
the name of the hotel; and it is not surprising, the 
circumstances of the case being considered, that 
substantial victory rested upon the banners of 
Madame. As she somewhat sophistically repre- 
sented to Don Anastasio, the use of the word casa 
would sufficiently indicate to his fellow-countrymen 
and to Spanish-Americans generally that the hotel 
was one at which both Spanish dishes and the Span- 
ish tongue would be served, while Napoleon would 
be a name to conjure with in the matter of the 
French trade. And she also made the strong point 
that she had a right to choose the more important 
portion of the name of the hotel because she knew 
how to keep it, while to Don Anastasio hotel-keep- 
ing — in common with business of every sort, saving 
only the profession of Spanish-American law, and 
the trade of Spanish-American revolution, neither 
of which could be very successfully carried on in 
the city of New York — ^was a hopeless mystery. 
Don Anastasio was no match for Madame in argu- 
ment; he was too gallant to rest his rights upon his 

4 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

having rescued her from her most grievous pHght of 
poverty; and for once he was unable to produce a 
law from the Siete Partidas that would resolve the 
matter in hand in accordance with his views. While 
he still was fumbling in the dusk of the thirteenth 
century for the assistance that Alonzo the Wise de- 
clined to give, Madame said briskly: "It is then 
decided!" And so it was. 

Therefore when the announcement of the new 
Franco-Spanish-American hotel was made in the 
Courrier des Etats Unis, the name under which that 
hostelry figured, and by which it subsequently 
achieved a well-earned fame, was the Casa Napo- 
leon. 



II 



But the story of the founding and of the naming of 
the Casa Napoleon had come to be ancient history 
when Mr. and Mrs. John Rayford — to whom New 
York was a very foreign city, and to whom, also, a 
very low-priced hotel was an economic necessity — 
drifted one bright June morning within its hospit- 
able doors. The crest of the wave of economy on 
which they rode, to pursue the marine simile, was so 
high that it carried them fairly up three flights of 
stairs, and stranded them at last in tHeJ smallest 
room on the fourth floor. Had there been a fifth 
floor in the Casa Napoleon, they would have been 
carried one story higher. 

Mrs. John Rayford, whose godfathers and god- 
mothers in baptism had bestowed upon her the 

5 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

singularly inappropriate name of Prudence, was 
charmed by the exceeding novelty of her surround- 
ings. On this head she expressed herself with a char- 
acteristic volubility and frankness. 

"Why, it's perfectly delightful, Jack," she said — 
she had hung her hat on one of the three hooks on 
the door, and was standing in front of the very small 
looking-glass patting her hair into proper shape. 
It was fluffy brown hair, with bright tones in it where 
the light caught it, and there was a good deal of it. 
"I've never seen any place that began to be so queer 
and so funny. The very name of it makes you feel 
ever so far away from everywhere; and the way that 
people were talking all sorts of languages to each 
other while we were waiting in the parlor was just 
like what it must have been at the Tower of Babel. 
Don't you think that it is a lovely place. Jack?" 

Jack was sitting on the bed, filling his pipe and 
looking admiringly at the pretty picture that his 
wife presented as she stood before the glass, with 
both arms raised, tightening her hair-pins. He 
lighted his pipe, clasped his hands comfortably 
round his right knee, leaned back a little, and an- 
swered with emphasis, "Yes, I do!" 

"And do you know, Jack," Prudence continued, 
"coming to this delightful little hotel, that makes 
me feel as though I were traveling in several foreign 
countries at once, has put an idea into my head? 
Yes, I intend to perfect my knowledge of foreign 
languages. I know a little French already — didn't 
you notice how pleased the chambermaid seemed 
to be just now when I thanked her for the towels 

6 




WHY, ITS PERFECTLY DELIGHTFUL, JACK 



AT THE CASA NAPOLEON 

in her own native tongue? But I shall bend my 
energies most strongly in the direction of Spanish, 
Jack; and I mean that you shall study Spanish too. 
When your rich half-uncle — whom you won't be- 
lieve in at all, and whom I believe in implicitly — 
comes home at last from South America, just think 
how pleased he will be to find us talking the lan- 
guage that all these years he has been accustomed to." 

"Suppose he has been living in Brazil, and speaks 
Portuguese?" Jack put in. 

"And if you succeed in getting something to do 
that pays pretty well," Prudence went on, without 
regard to this interruption, "so that we always will 
be easy in our minds about paying the board — and 
I'm sure you will, you dear boy — I don't care if we 
stay here for a whole year. We ought to know Span- 
ish perfectly in a year, I should think. And just 
think. Jack, what a nice place this would be to bring 
your half-uncle to in case you should find him sud- 
denly — and I suppose you will find him suddenly 
when you find him at all. After all these years 
in South America, he certainly would feel much 
more at home in a place like this than he would in 
an American hotel, with everybody talking English. 
And what fun it will be. Jack, when you really do 
find him at last! Of course he must have made a 
tremendous fortune by this time; and of course he 
will want to leave it all to you; and of course, in the 
mean time, he will want to provide for you very 
handsomely. How much. Jack — about how much 
do you think he will think he ought to allow to his 
only half-sister's only son?" 

7 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

"In view, you mean, of his devoted love for his 
only half-sister's whole father, and of the constant 
tenderness manifested toward him by that connection 
by marriage through a considerable term of years?" 

"Don't be provoking, Jack. I know that he and 
your grandfather didn't exactly take to each other, 
and that it was because they couldn't get along to- 
gether comfortably that he ran off to California, 
and then drifted so far away into South America 
that he never came home again. But he certainly 
was very fond of your grandmother, Jack. You can 
see that in his letters. And it was only when she 
died that he stopped writing, and so you lost track 
of him. I am sure that he must yearn for the love 
of the little half-sister whom he sends such nice mes- 
sages to in those old letters; and I can fancy what 
a comfort it will be to him to find that, although 
she is dead, he still has left to him her son — " 

"Whom he never laid eyes on, never even heard 
of, and whom — for my mother was not married 
until years after the letters stopped — he would not 
even know by name. Of course he does, Prue, my 
dear, and I have only to find him (and, supposing 
him to be still alive, I haven't the least notion where 
to look for him), and then to mention my name to 
him (which, as I have just explained, he cannot 
possibly recognize), in order to receive an immedi- 
ate gift of half a million down, and the positive 
promise of his entire estate upon his decease — to 
the entire exclusion of the claims of his South-Amer- 
ican wife, and of the seventeen children of his own 
who have been born in the mean time!" 

8 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

"Oh!" exclaimed Prudence, in a tone of much 
concern, "you don't think he is married and has 
children of his own? Uncles, and I should think 
half-uncles, who wander off into foreign countries 
this way never get married. Jack. Truly, you don't 
think that he is married, do you ?" 

"I think that you are rapidly taking leave of your 
senses," Jack answered promptly; "and I also think 
that before you grow quite raving we will go down- 
stairs and get our dinner. Come along, Prue; very 
likely Half-uncle William came up on the last 
steamer from South America, and is stopping here 
at the Casa Napoleon, and is down-stairs at this very 
moment waiting for us." 

"I wish that just once in a while. Jack, when I 
am perfectly serious and very much interested in 
something, you wouldn't make fun of me. And I 
do wish," Prudence added a moment later, "that 
you would learn to kiss me without hugging so hard, 
and without all mussing my hair up just after I have 
fixed it. The very first thing that I shall ask your 
half-uncle to do, after we have found him, is to teach 
you better manners." And then they went to dinner. 



in 

There was an agreeable down-at-heel air about 
the Casa Napoleon, that to persons educated to an 
understanding of the true meaning of the word com- 
fort was largely promising. In the course of the years 
which had passed since Don Anastasio's revolution- 

9 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

ary Mexican silver dollars had been spent in its fur- 
nishing, the kindly touch of Time had toned down 
the too lively colors of the chairs and carpets and 
wall-paper and curtains, all of which had been se- 
lected in accordance with Madame's vivid taste; 
and the same mellowing influence had worked to 
bring the management of the little hotel and the 
requirements of its numerous patrons into a pleasing 
harmony. Ostentatious display was ignored; com- 
fort was insisted upon. The whole creed of Madame 
was comprehended in two items: cleanliness and a 
good cook. The first of these articles of faith she 
enforced personally; the second was a more tender 
point with her — for the place in the kitchen vacated 
by the untimely death of Monsieur, her husband of 
convenience, never had been filled precisely to her 
mind. Don Anastasio's sole cause for jealousy was 
the frequent invocation by Madame — ^when affairs 
in the cooking department went wrong — of the cu- 
linary wraith of his predecessor in the possession, 
not of Madame's affections, but of her commissarial 
esteem. There were times when Don Anastasio 
thought that this devotion to an ideal defunct cook 
was carried too far; but at such times he found 
solace in referring to the Sixth Partida of King 
Alonzo, and therefrom drawing the broad gener- 
alization that the actual rights of the living are 
superior to the supposed rights of the dead. 

And, in truth, it was because her standard was 
an ideal one that Madame was not more entirely 
satisfied with the fare that her kitchen provided. 
Guided by her own knowledge of what good French 

10 



AT THE CASA. NAPOLEON 

cooking should be — and Madame, it must be re- 
membered, was born in Toulouse — and being in- 
structed from time to time by intelligent persons 
from southern lands in the composition of delicacies 
dear to the Spanish-American palate, her table was 
one that the frequenters of much more pretentious 
hotels in New York very well might have smacked 
their lips over. 

And Don Anastasio — of a Sunday, as he packed 
his lean person full of huevos en tortilla con chile and 
mole de guajolote, and laid a substantial layer of de- 
licious guisados and delicately fried frijoles over all 
— certainly did smack his lips most heartily. And 
at the same time did he thank all the saints in the 
calendar (for Don Anastasio was a religious man in 
his later years) for the rich return that his invest- 
ment of revolutionary silver dollars was bringing 
him in. On such festive occasions (when additional 
good fortune made this possible) he would turn to 
his old-time revolutionary companion, the Senor 
Estrano, and would say, with his mouth full of mole: 
"This is better than fighting the pestilent Comon- 
fort, old friend!" And the Senor Estrano, also with 
his mouth full of mole, would answer thickly but 
heartily: ^^ De veras, senor T' And then, but with a 
little sigh for the pulque that fitly and deliciously 
belongs with mole, but that is a delight unobtain- 
able outside of Mexico, they would drink to each 
other in deep draughts of the honest red wine (Ma- 
dame herself saw to its honesty) of Bordeaux. 

But it was not often that Don Anastasio was 
cheered by the presence of his old-time companion 

ij 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

in the wars. The Seiior Estrano, usually addressed 
and referred to as Don Guillermo, had been whirled 
out of Mexico by the same revolution that had sent 
Don Anastasio flying northward; but his own flight 
had been toward the south. He had come to a halt 
in Venezuela, and — possessing the business faculties 
which Don Anastasio so conspicuously lacked — he 
had there acquired a coff'ee-plantation, and, in course 
of years, had grown to be a person of substance. As 
he frankly told Don Anastasio, no reasonable man 
could be expected to absent himself often, or for 
long at a time, from the easy life and heavenly cli- 
mate of Venezuela for the rasping hfe and abomi- 
nable climate of New York. Don Anastasio had 
spent a stray half-year in Caracas, and so knew that 
what his friend declared was true. 

Yet would not Don Anastasio give up his friend- 
ship — though in preserving it he took direct issue 
with King Alonzo, for that monarch expressly sets 
forth, in the seventh law of the Fourth Partida, that 
a legitimate reason for breaking a friendship is that 
accident has carried one friend or the other to dwell 
in distant lands. Fortunately, it was possible to 
compromise the matter without disobedience to the 
Siete Partidas (for the clause is not mandatory), 
and without disrespect to the King of Castile (to 
whom the facilities of travel by steam-power were 
unknown). Every year or two, in the interest of 
his coff*ee dealings, and for love of his old friend, 
Don Guillermo came northward; wisely timing his 
journeyings so that he should spend the month of 
October in New York- — at which partially pleasant 

12 



AT THE CASA NAPOLEON 

season no great stretch of the imagination would be 
required to fancy himself at home in Venezuela with 
the weather at its worst. And during these most 
happy visits the two old boys had rarely good times 
together — as they feasted on the good things which 
Madame provided for them, while they fought over 
again jovially their long-past campaigns. 

Nor had Don Anastasio any lack of good com- 
pany even in the seasons when his well-beloved com- 
panion in arms was in his far-ofF home. The fame 
of the Casa Napoleon had gone abroad into the dis- 
tant regions of the South, and into and out of its 
hospitable doorway there was ever a steady flow and 
ebb of travellers from and to the Spanish islands and 
the Spanish Main. Among these wayfarers Don 
Anastasio found a plenty of good talking mates; and 
the friendliness that grew up between the host and 
the patrons of the little hotel was shown by the 
hearty huggings and back-pattings when they de- 
parted; and by the still warmer demonstrations of 
a like nature when, as often chanced, these same 
patrons came again. 

Among the travellers who frequented the Casa 
Napoleon,' Madame's fellow-country-folk were few. 
But among the French residents in New York — 
whose home, for the most part, was southward and 
westward of Washington Square — the hotel was 
most honorably known and most highly esteemed. 
It was here that dinners of estate were given, and 
breakfasts of betrothal, and also wedding breakfasts 
— at which latter it was hard to tell whether the 
young bride or the young groom suffered the greater 

13 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

tortures of confusion by reason of the very highly 
spiced wit that was let loose by Madame's rare old 
burgundy; and at which, certainly, only the fathers 
and mothers and other elderly people had a really 
good time. In addition to the very profitable busi- 
ness which this class of custom afforded, certain 
well-to-do persons — for the most part gray-headed, 
and come to the time of life when the bourgeois 
Frenchman frankly surrenders himself to the pleas- 
ures of the throat — came regularly to Madame's 
well-spread board to dine. Of an evening, both the 
dining-room proper — in which the ordinary of the 
hotel was served — and the restaurant adjoining it, 
set with a dozen little tables, were crowded. As to 
the smells which pervaded the Casa Napoleon about 
dinner-time, and even were wafted out into the 
street by the frequent opening of its doors, they 
were of a nature so savory and so mouth-watering 
that St. Anthony himself would have succumbed to 
them! In a small way, too, the Casa Napoleon had 
a clientele of Americans. They were not very dis- 
tinguished Americans — a few newspaper people and 
artists, and some ladies and gentlemen connected 
with the minor regions of the stage — but they were 
of a sort to appreciate clean rooms at moderate 
prices, and capital breakfasts and dinners at half a 
dollar, and a table wine at twenty-five cents the 
half bottle that, at least, did not absolutely make 
one's mouth pucker. In accordance with the easy- 
going ways of their kind, and of the hotel itself, 
these slipshod Americans were on friendly talking 
terms with each other, and with such of the fre- 

14 




HE WAS A GENTLE, KINDLY OLD BOY 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

quenters of the Casa Napoleon in general as spoke a 
language that they could understand. 

Among the various far from taciturn persons com- 
posing this less choice than curious collection of 
humanity, Don Anastasio, who dearly loved a dish 
of friendly talk, never was at a loss to find some- 
body to have it with. In the course of his wander- 
ings he had acquired as extensive and as fragmentary 
a vocabulary as goes to the make-up of a Levantine 
courier; and (save when conversing in his native 
Spanish) he put together his fragments with as little 
care as to where the pieces came from as though — 
with Sir Nathaniel and Holofernes — he had been at 
a great feast of languages and had stolen the scraps. 
For all the fire of his revolutionary youth — and a 
good deal of this fire still remained in his composi- 
tion — he was a gentle, kindly old boy, with a mel- 
low voice that had a friendly ring in it, and a yel- 
low, wrinkled face on which there came easily a 
very friendly smile. As to the actual management of 
the hotel, he knew no more about it than a babe in 
arms; but he was useful because, under Madame's 
directions, he kept the accounts, and still more use- 
ful because of the good impression that his genial 
ways and kindly manners made upon all who came 
within his gates. 

The real manager of the hotel, of course, was 
Madame. She was at all times and in all seasons at 
the very top and bottom of it. In the kitchen she 
braved the chef in his most peppery moods in order 
to enforce her mandate that justice should be done 
to her patrons without, by extravagant wasteful- 

15 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

ness, doing injustice to herself. In the upper regions 
of the house she watched with a ceaseless vigilance 
the ways of Marie, the sprightly French chamber- 
maid — compelling on the part of that far too good- 
looking young person a maximum of application in 
the matters of careful bed-making and sweeping and 
dusting, and a minimum of flirting with the male 
lodgers. And in the dining-room, where the Cuban 
negro, Telesforo, waited upon the Spanish-speaking 
portion of the household, and in the restaurant where 
the public at large was waited upon by the one-eyed 
waiter, Leon, was apparent, in the precision and the 
excellence of the service, the good effect of the just 
but severe discipline maintained by Madame. In a 
word, it is not to be believed that, as Madame con- 
ducted it, a more comfortable little hotel than the 
Casa Napoleon was to be found in all the stretch and 
compass of the world. 

That this was the opinion of its patrons was made 
manifest by the persistence of their patronage. Old 
Monsieur Duvent, who was the dealer in a small 
but flourishing and very respectable French gaming 
establishment in South Fifth Avenue, had eaten his 
dinner and drunk his half bottle of Pontet Canet in 
the restaurant every night for many years — Don 
Anastasio and Madame regarded him almost as a 
brother. For more than nine years, with as much 
of regularity as the exigencies of his practice per- 
mitted. Dr. Theophile Laurencet had come around 
twice daily from his near-by office in Macdougal 
Street for his two substantial daily meals. Dr. 
Theophile was a French creole from the island of 

i6 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

Guadelupe, whose brusque manner and disposition 
to cynical forms of speech by no means concealed 
the intrinsic gentleness of his nature and the rare 
goodness of his heart. His practice — among the 
French-speaking and Spanish-speaking and Italian- 
speaking residents of the shady quarter of the town 
in which he lived — brought him small returns in 
money; but it won for him, and deservedly, great 
gratitude and love. It was rumored that Dr. Theo- 
phile had left his native Guadelupe because of a 
sad blight that there had fallen upon his affections 
in his youth; wherefor all the women had an especial 
tenderness for him, and readily condoned his caus- 
tic comments upon the foibles of their sex — ^well 
knowing that these comments were but inverted 
compliments to their sex's power and charm. For 
five years — excepting only in summer, when she 
betook herself to the watering-places — Mrs. Myrtle 
Vane, who did society news and special articles for 
several New York newspapers, and also out-of-town 
correspondence, had been a regular lodger and board- 
er. Mrs. Mortimer — who politely was supposed to 
be a capitalist in a small way, and who certainly 
seemed to be a person of leisure, had rented the best 
room in the house for four years — and during this 
period had given so many little suppers in her apart- 
ment that Madame had come to look upon her quite 
in the light of a gold-mine. For six years Colonel 
Withersby, whose business was that of a promoter, 
and who mainly devoted himself to promoting 
South-American tramway enterprises, had made the 
Casa Napoleon his headquarters in New York, and 

17 



AT THE CASA NAPOLEON 

also had been the means of bringing to that estab- 
hshment a large number of profitable South-Amer- 
ican customers. Miss Violet Bream and Mr. Claude 
Dunbar — known, and justly esteemed, off the stage 
as Ned Harrison and Polly his wife — made the Casa 
Napoleon their home when they were lucky enough 
to have a New York engagement: and the gay little 
dinners and suppers that this merry and most hos- 
pitable couple gave when they happened to have the 
money for such festivities had made the hotel most 
favorably known to a wide circle of their profes- 
sional acquaintances. 

The newspaper men and the artists were the least 
to be depended upon of Madame's clients — but this 
was less their fault than their misfortune. It is not 
every newspaper man, still less every artist, in New 
York who occupies a position of such assured easy 
affluence as to be able to go every night of his life to 
an ordinary whereat, without wine, the charge is 
half a dollar. All that can be said of the regularity 
of these literary and artistic customers of the Casa 
Napoleon is that they never willingly missed a din- 
ner there on a night when they possessed the half- 
dollar necessary to pay for it. And the confidential 
statement may be added that some of them not 
infrequently got their dinners even when their 
half-dollars were but desirable possibilities of a 
doubtful future — for Madame, as is the way the 
world over with plump, round little women, had 
within her ample breast a warm and very kindly 
heart. 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 



IV 

Had Mr. John Rayford and Prudence, his mis- 
named wife, known New York thoroughly, instead 
of being absolute strangers to it, they could not have 
found for themselves a more fitting abiding-place, 
all things considered, than fate found for them when 
it brought them to the Casa Napoleon. A not more 
costly shelter, even a less costly shelter, they could 
have found elsewhere; but nowhere else could they 
have found a dwelling-place where they and their 
feilow-boarders would have been so harmoniously 
agreed in living in the present on discounts of the 
future while building and inhabiting castles in the 
air. Excepting in the case of the few prominent 
patrons of the establishment already named — who 
were ranges and well provided for — it is a solemn 
truth that almost every one of Madame*s customers 
was engaged in a gay battle with fate for nightly 
bed and daily board. Master Jack and Mistress 
Prudence were about to begin this same battle; and 
they were marching to it in the merriest possible 
manner and with the very lightest of hearts. 

Jack had known for several years — partly from 
inborn conviction, partly from the assurances of his 
widowed mother, whose pride was great in him — 
that he was doing himself injustice by not giving 
the exceptional business capacity that he possessed 
opportunity to expand in a broader field. There- 
fore he decided, when such decision was open to him 
— his mother being more than a year dead, and the 

3 19 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

need that he should provide a sure support for her 
being so ended — that he would forsake the very 
insignificant town in the Susquehanna Valley where 
all his life had been spent, and go to a city big 
enough to give his genius the chance that it wanted 
to swell. For him to continue, at a salary of only 
twelve hundred dollars a year, to serve as general- 
utility-man in the counting-house of the car-building 
establishment with which he was connected, he con- 
cluded, was a sheer waste of his valuable time. 

And so when Prudence — thereby giving, without 
in the least intending such rudeness, the lie direct 
to her godfathers and godmothers in baptism — ac- 
cepted this view of the situation, and consented to 
marry him and to assist him in acting upon it, he not 
unnaturally believed that his fortune was as good 
as made. The faith that Prudence reposed in his 
genius was even firmer than that which his mother 
had placed in it» And there was no one to check her 
in demonstrating her faith in this rash fashion, for 
her sole relative in the world was a luckless step- 
father — whose ventures at making a living by keep- 
ing a country store landed him at irregular but brief 
intervals in bankruptcy; and whose interest, there- 
fore, strongly prompted him to relieve himself of all 
useless responsibilities. So Jack and Prudence had 
a pretty little wedding in the country church, one 
sunny April day that had never a shiver in it; and 
in the afternoon of that same day they made a wed- 
ding journey just six hours long that ended in New 
York. As they crossed the river in a Jersey City 
ferry-boat, Jack looked at New York approvingly 

20 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

— and wondered pleasantly to himself how much of 
it he was likely to own at the end of the next ten 
years. He had heard that the Fifth Avenue Hotel 
was a fairly satisfactory establishment as hotels go, 
and in order to give style to his arrival — and also 
in order to avoid losing his way — they drove thither 
in a carriage. His hand trembled a little as he regis- 
tered "John Rayford and wife." It was a thrilling 
sort of experience to announce to all the world, in 
this fashion, that he was married. They already 
had eaten one dinner that day, and it was something 
of a surprise to them to find that the hotel people 
expected them to eat another. 

Jack had decided that before he took any steps 
toward establishing himself in the financial world 
of New York they would spend a few weeks in amus- 
ing themselves and in looking around. He felt that 
in honor of his wedding he was entitled to a holiday; 
and there was no need for him to go to work in a 
hurry, for he had nearly seven hundred dollars in 
cold cash — for Jack had been prudently saving his 
salary in the past year, and a little legacy of four 
hundred dollars had come to him from his mother. 
Prudence regarded herself in the light of a young 
person who was absolutely rolling in riches; for her 
stepfather — out of the funds which he had plucked, 
like brands from the burning, from his latest bank- 
ruptcy—had made her a wedding present of fifty dol- 
lars, which was a larger sum than she ever had hoped 
to own at one time even in her dreams. 

It is probable that two young people never had a 
better time in New York than Jack and Prudence 

2>l 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

had during their first week in that city. In their 
hotel they had a deHghtful Httle apartment, the 
windows of which looked out over Broadway and 
Fifth Avenue and Madison Square; they drove in 
the various parks; they made expeditions on the 
rivers and the bay; they went to the art-galleries 
and to the museums; they visited several shops and 
treated themselves to a pleasing amount of purple 
and fine linen; they fared sumptuously every day; 
and every blessed night they went to a fresh theatre. 
Prudence declared that it was altogether too good to 
be true; and advanced the metaphysical theory that 
they must be a prince and princess disguised not 
only from the world, but even from themselves! 

At the end of the week, when Jack was called upon 
to pay his hotel bill, that included carriage hire, and 
found that it was a trifle over ninety dollars, he also 
concluded that their life was too good to be true — 
but on grounds much less metaphysical. They 
held a merry little council of war in their pretty 
apartment — for even allowing for the additional 
sixty or seventy dollars that had gone for raiment 
and theatres and incidentals, they still had a vast 
amount of money left — and decided at once that they 
would move into cheaper quarters. That very after- 
noon the move was effected; and by night they were 
established in a room, that for all practical purposes 
was as comfortable as the apartment that they had 
vacated, in a small hotel on Broadway, where they 
paid for board and lodging what by contrast seemed 
to them the very reasonable price of forty dollars 
a week. Prudence decided — ^while they were eating 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

a very satisfactory dinner, at which they treated 
themselves to a half bottle of champagne in celebra- 
tion of their successful abandonment of extravagant 
ways — that it would be more in keeping with their 
present state should they regard themselves as a dis- 
guised baron and baroness. 

Pushing still further their schemes for economical 
retrenchment, they hired no more carriages, and 
they made a point of taking all their meals in their 
hotel; and they were circumspect in the matter of 
miscellaneous purchases. But they kept up their 
theatre-going with undiminished ardor, and still con- 
tinued their liberal system of sight-seeing. 

Their second week in New York, all told, cost 
them seventy-five dollars. It was a great saving 
over their first week; but when Jack had added up 
his accounts he looked a little grave over the total. 
However, he would get to work soon; and as he had 
heard a great deal about the high salaries paid in 
New York he felt that his future was entirely secure. 
The third week they went but twice to the theatre; 
and were so prudent in the matter of their incidental 
expenses that their total outlay was only sixty dol- 
lars. Jack was highly pleased with this result; es- 
pecially as he had come to the conclusion that his 
holiday now had lasted long enough, and that he 
would set about finding work in earnest. 



In the matter of finding work when he wanted it, 
Jack believed that all before him was plain saiHng. 

23 



AT THE CASA NAPOLEON 

He had brought a letter of introduction from the 
senior partner of the car-building firm to a banker 
in Wall Street, and he felt very sure that he had only 
to step down and present this letter in order to se- 
cure at once precisely the berth that he desired. It 
was possible even, he thought, that^the banker might 
offer him a junior partnership: he had heard that 
the life of New York business houses was due to the 
clear-sighted way in which their managers constant- 
ly were recruiting from the country young men in 
whom were manifest the elements of commercial 
success. 

Holding these views, young Mr. Rayford was both 
surprised and pained by the manner in which his 
letter to the Wall Street banker was received. He 
did not even lay eyes on the banker; and at the end 
of half an hour after his card and letter had been 
sent in, word came out to him from that gentleman 
that he was very much occupied, but would be glad 
to see him at some other time. 

As he walked up Wall Street, after this adventure. 
Jack felt a little dazed. On his way to present his 
letter, he had admired the statue of George Wash- 
ington. Regarding the statue in his changed mood, 
he decided that its legs were unduly long, and that 
as a work of art it was greatly overrated. He was 
hurt at the scant courtesy that had been shown him. 
When New York men had come with letters of intro- 
duction to the car-building firm, they had been well 
taken care of. More than once, in order to be civil 
to casual New-Yorkers, who had no claim on him 
whatever, he had hired a buggy himself and taken 

24 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

them driving. This uncivil return for his civility- 
was rasping. 

However, as he walked up Broadway, and the 
soothing influences of a bustling city calmed him a 
little, he reflected that he must make allowances for 
the diff'erence between the easy ways of the country 
and the driving ways of the town. In the morning 
papers he had read that this very banker was en- 
gaged in a gigantic deal with a great English syndi- 
cate that was negotiating for the purchase of all the 
tanneries in the United States. As he read the an- 
nouncement it had occurred to him that he himself 
probably would have a hand in this deal before it was 
ended; this did not seem so probable now, but the 
reflection that the banker no doubt was engaged in 
most important consultation with the English capi- 
talists was a very reasonable excuse for his deferring 
their interview. No doubt, when they did meet, 
the banker would apologize for his unavoidable 
rudeness — and would make things all right by giv- 
ing him a part in his next great transaction. It was 
a comforting reflection that several things, including 
the country itself, still remained in the United States 
for English syndicates to buy. By the time that 
Jack, walking up Broadway, got home to Prudence, 
he was in a cheery mood again — and they made an 
expedition to Fort Lee; and took a delightful walk 
along the Palisades; and broke through their rule 
about eating all their meals at their hotel by having 
a very jolly dinner at a queer little French restaurant, 
where the proprietor took a personal interest in them, 
and talked to them in a fatherly way in broken Eng- 

25 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

Hsh; and then they took another walk on the Pali- 
sades, by moonlight; and never got back to their 
hotel in New York until it was nearly bedtime. 

Jack's second attempt to see the banker also was 
a failure; but it was not barren of results, for he was 
given an appointment — in consideration of the strong 
letter that he brought — for the next morning. This 
was hopeful — which was more than could be said of 
the interview when it did finally come off. In the 
course of the five minutes that it lasted Jack was 
informed that New York was the most overcrowded 
city in the world; that the only place where there 
was any room in it was at the very top; and that if 
he, the banker, heard of any business opening that 
he thought suited to Mr. Rayford's requirements he 
would communicate with him. Jack walked up 
Wall Street, after these cheerless communications 
had been made, not only dazed but demoralized. 
He was beginning to have forced home upon him 
the truth that there was a very seamy side to New 
York. As he looked at the statue of George Wash- 
ington he decided that its legs were not only too long, 
but that one of them actually was longer than the 
other. In short, he was in a most misanthropic 
frame of mind. 

Fortunately, when he got home to Prudence he 
found that young person in an exceedingly gay 
mood. During his expeditions down-town she had 
been making explorations of New York on her own 
account, and had derived much amusement from 
them. In the course of that particular morning she 

had taken an especially entertaining cruise — down 

26 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

Fifth Avenue in a stage as far as the stage would 
take her, she explained, and then all around in the 
queerest and most delightful part of the town that 
they yet had found. Jack had no more notion than 
Prudence had herself of the shady region that, un- 
harmed, she had been wandering through; and 
partly because he wanted something that would take 
him out of himself and make him forget a little the 
troubles that he began to be conscious were impend- 
ing, and partly because he really wanted to see the 
queer part of New York that Prudence had dis- 
covered, he very willingly accepted her suggestion 
that they should have their lunch at once, and then 
set ofF to explore together the city within a city that 
she had found. 

Though Jack did not know it, his hand held up 
to stop a Fifth Avenue stage might well have been 
the hand of* Fate itself; for as they entered that 
incommodious vehicle and went lumbering south- 
ward, each turn of the heavy wheels marked an ap- 
preciable advance toward the fulfilment of their des- 
tiny. It is one of the pleasing features of this life 
that we all are living without even a single one of 
us understanding its meaning — and especially one 
of the things which strengthen the position of the 
theorists who advocate the freedom of the human 
mind to will — that upon such chances as an acci- 
dental determination to ride up-town or down-town 
in an omnibus the whole shaping of our lives de- 
pends. 

Neither Jack nor Prudence took this serious view 
of the case as they jolted down Fifth Avenue, and 

27 



AT THE CASA NAPOLEON 

across Washington Square into South Fifth Avenue, 
and finally descended from the stage at Bleecker 
Street. Prudence was overjoyed to pilot Jack 
through the queer country that she had discovered; 
and Jack, whose spirits were of an elastic sort, found 
his dread of impending calamity rapidly slipping away 
from him as he and Prudence wandered delightedly 
through the shabby streets; and commented with 
interest upon the odd people whom they met; and 
drew each other's attention to the many extraordi- 
nary signs. Prudence was especially moved by find- 
ing herself in the very home of the curlers of feathers 
and makers of artificial flowers; and they both specu- 
lated curiously upon what the sign reading ** manu- 
facturer of peps for artificial flowers" possibly could 
mean. Neither of them ever had heard of a pep; 
and when, later, they looked for the word in the dic- 
tionary, they could not find it. But nearly every- 
thing that they saw in the course of that walk was 
curious and delightful. The majority of the people 
whom they met very evidently were not Americans, 
and most of the scraps of talk which they heard 
were Italian or French. No imagination at all was 
required. Prudence declared, to fancy that they 
were visiting a foreign country. 

But the fateful part of this walk was that in the 
course of it they came upon the Casa Napoleon. It 
had a most attractive look, this little hotel. In the 
balcony that ran along the line of the second-floor 
windows flowers were growing in pots; and there 
was a most pleasing air of neatness and comfort 
about it; and out from the front door — for dinner- 

28 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

time was near at hand — came a most appetizing 
smell. 

"What great, what very great fun it would be to 
live there, Jack!" Prudence said. The tone in which 
she spoke showed that the possibility of making this 
suggestion a practical reality had not occurred to her. 

But Jack pulled up short, and answered: "Well, 
why shouldn't we?" For it struck him suddenly 
that this must be a much cheaper hotel than the one 
at which they were stopping, and that here was a 
chance to see a very queer side of New York life, 
and at the same time to make a wise, not to say a 
necessary, reduction in their expenses. 

"Oh, you dear boy! Do you really mean it? Let 
us go right in, this very instant, and find out about 
terms." And when they found that they could have 
the little room on the fourth floor for five dollars a 
week, and that their board would cost them only 
twelve dollars a week more — ^with the charm of being 
talked to in broken English, and of hearing all sorts 
of foreign languages talked all around them thrown 
in without any extra charge at all — it is not sur- 
prising that these light-hearted young people de- 
cided without a single moment of hesitation that 
here should be their home. With characteristic 
promptitude, and taking advantage of the fact that 
their week at the other hotel was just ended, they 
moved in that very day. 

Cheered by the knowledge that at a single stroke 
he had reduced his weekly expenses more than one- 
half, and that on the basis of living thus established 
he had money enough to carry him for a full three 

29 



AT THE CASA NAPOLlgON 

months, Jack's spirits came up with a bound. The 
spice of adventure that was involved in dwelling in 
such unconventional quarters tickled his fancy; and 
the knowledge that at last he really was out in the 
world and was fighting his way on his merits en- 
larged his sense of self-esteem. With these pleasant 
forces at work within him, and with Prudence quite 
literally dancing with delight because of their migra- 
tion to the foreign country that she herself had 
found, it was in a very happy frame of mind that Mr. 
and Mrs. Rayford entered into possession of their 
contracted kingdom on the fourth floor of the Casa 
Napoleon. 

VI 

When they went down to dinner that first night — 
being dwellers within the hotel, not mere patrons of 
the restaurant — they were conducted by Madame 
into the dining-room, that had painted over its door- 
way in large black letters the word *' Comedor." 
Later, they came to know that this word meant 
dining-room in the Spanish tongue; but they njsver 
quite lost the impression then conveyed that it had 
a hidden but close connection with some unknown 
Spanish naval officer who, no doubt, at one time had 
occupied it. And, on the other hand, even after 
Jack had attained a very tolerable working knowl- 
edge of Spanish, his habit of calling a dining-room 
a commodore remained unbroken. 

They decided, on the whole, that this was the 
jolliest dinner that they had eaten since they came 

30 



AT THE CASA NAPOLEON 

to New York. The dining-room had one long table 
down the middle of it, and four little round tables 
in its four corners. As a mark of distinction, Madame 
placed them at one of the little round tables; and 
from this point of advantage they could look about 
them upon their house-mates, and could see a good 
deal, also, through an archway that on occasion 
could be closed by a folding-door, of their board- 
mates in the adjoining restaurant. At the little round 
table opposite to them sat Mrs. Myrtle Vane, a 
blonde beauty of the large type, whom age had so 
far succeeded in withering that she had been com- 
pelled to summon in defense of her vanishing com- 
plexion the kindly aid of art. She wore a voluminous 
and highly colored tea-gown — that Prudence per- 
ceived stood urgently in need of washing — and 
diamond rings of all shapes and sizes blazed upon 
her large thick hands. But she seemed to be a good- 
natured body, and when the young people took 
their seats she nodded to them pleasantly. In fact, 
everybody in the room bowed to them; a proceeding 
that surprised them a good deal, until, casting about 
in their minds for the cause of this friendliness, they 
remembered that such was the affable custom at 
the ordinaries of foreign hotels. The only other lady 
in the room was Mrs. Mortimer — who also was a 
blonde, but of a highly factitious kind. Even Jack 
could see that her complexion was manufactured, 
but the keener observation of Prudence was required 
to perceive that her hair was bleached and that her 
eyebrows were dyed. In truth, Mrs. Mortimer, to 
use the terms of commerce, was put up to meet thq 

31 



AT THE CASA NAPOLEON 

requirements of the Spanish-American market; and 
long study of this market had made her very suc- 
cessful in supplying its demands. As to her dress, 
the Queen of Sheba never came to a table d'hote in a 
finer one. Colonel Withersby sat opposite to her — 
a big, good-looking man, with an air of such entire 
assurance that he seemed quite capable, had he 
happened to fall in with that august personage, of 
clapping the Pope on the back and offering him a 
chance to come in on the ground floor in the floating 
of a tramway enterprise. He and Mrs. Mortimer 
conversed with much animation, indifferently in 
Spanish and English, and — later, when Madame 
joined them — in French. Jack and Prudence gath- 
ered from what was said in English that the colonel 
had just returned from a successful business trip to 
Bogota. There were half a dozen dark-skinned 
Cubans at the table, who chattered with each other 
volubly, and who occasionally took part in Colonel 
Withersby's and Mrs. Mortimer's talk; and at the 
little round table in the far corner of the room a coal- 
black gentleman from Hayti, very richly dressed, 
and exhibiting all the jewelry that one man possibly 
could display, ate his dinner solitary. All the Cu- 
bans had recourse at short intervals to the consola- 
tion of cigarettes, which they rolled deftly between 
their yellow fingers; and when the colonel had ar- 
rived at the stage of coffee and toothpicks, he lighted 
a huge cigar. For Jack and Prudence it was all bet- 
ter than anything that they had seen at the theaters; 
and its exceeding farawayness was made the more 
real by the fact that the Cuban negro, Telesforo, who 

32 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

waited upon them, could speak not more than half 
a dozen words of EngHsh, and insisted upon address- 
ing them in Spanish throughout their repast. When 
they had retired to their very small room on the 
fourth floor — the company in the dining-room, ac- 
cording to their several nationalities, saying good 
night and huenas noches and bon soir as they retired 
— Prudence threw her arms about Jack's neck and 
declared that nothing so delightful as that queer 
dinner had happened to her since she was born. 

"Not even getting married?" Jack asked. 

"Certainly not," Prudence answered; and then, 
a little shocked at the wicked falseness of this asser- 
tion, she added: "Of course I don't include that. 
That stands all by itself, and don't count in ordi- 
nary matters any more than air or sunshine or — 
or—" 

"Kisses," Jack interpolated. 

"I am ashamed of you. Jack," Prudence was pres- 
ently able to say; but her tone was not overbur- 
dened with severity. "And I've come to the conclu- 
sion, Jack," she went on — ^when they had overcome 
in the only practical manner the inconvenience 
of having only one chair — "that what we must call 
ourselves now is a disguised count and countess. 
We can be driven from our estates, you know, and 
forced to fly to America, leaving all of our wealth be- 
hind us; and that makes it perfectly natural that 
we should come to this hotel and live in a little room 
on the fourth floor. And then, when you begin to 
make money, or, what will be still more life-like, 
when you find your half-uncle William and he form- 

33 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

ally adopts you, we can consider that we have had our 
rightful inheritance restored to us." 

"And we will go back to our ancestral castle under 
a triumphal arch, while a brass-band plays, and all 
the tenants come to welcome us in clean smock- 
frocks and white dresses with pink bows?" 

"Exactly," Prudence answered. "But really, 
Jack," she went on, presently, "why don't you 
write to your half-uncle William, and ask him, not 
exactly to adopt you, you know, but to put you in 
the way of making a fortune for yourself? Since he 
has made a fortune of his own, he certainly will be 
able to show you how he did it; that wouldn't be 
asking much of a favor of him, Fm sure." 

"Supposing that he has made a fortune, which, 
you must remember. Prudence, is an entirely gra- 
tuitous supposition, it would not. But how would 
you address the letter; just to 'William Strahan, 
South America'?" 

"Why, of course," Prudence answered. "That's 
where he is, isn't it?" 

"Yes; at least he's more likely to be in South 
America than anywhere else — that is, if he's alive, 
you know. But South America is a biggish place, 
Prue." 

"But you might try," Prudence persisted; "it 
couldn't do any harm, and he might get it, you know 
— and then think how comfortable everything would 
be. He would take us right home to live with him, 
of course; and I always have so longed to live in a 
tropical country. You don't know. Jack, how I 
suffer in winter from cold feet at night 1" And then, 

34 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

as it struck Prudence that Jack but very recently 
had acquired a position that entitled him to confi- 
dences of this nature, she blushed delightfully, and 
went on with some confusion: "Just think of the 
oranges, and the pineapple palms, and the delicious 
sunshine, and the deep blue sky." 

"Pineapple palms is good," Jack replied, unfeel- 
ingly. "What you seem to stand in need of, Pru- 
dence, is a post-graduate course in geography and 
pomology; in both of those branches of learning 
you are decidedly weak. I don't think that I need 
write my letter to Half-uncle William to-night; so 
suppose you put on your hat, and we'll take a turn 
in that square where that twisted statue of Gari- 
baldi is, while I smoke a pipe. Under the trees out 
there, with foreign languages going off all around 
us, it will be like a bit out of an opera." 



VII 

Jack was punctual in informing the Wall Street 
banker of the change in his address, and for a week 
he entertained a lively hope that each morning 
would bring him a letter from that gentleman con- 
taining an offer of a three-thousand-dollar clerkship. 
By this time his earlier hope of a junior partnership 
was abandoned. But the letter did not come. Then 
he sent a polite note of reminder; and as, at the end 
of three days, no answer came to this missive, he de- 
cided that he had better call in person. He waited 
an hour, and then accomplished an interview of two 

4 35 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

minutes. This time it was a quite decisive interview. 
The banker declared positively that he could not 
put Mr. Ray ford in the way of obtaining any em- 
ployment in New York; that the beginning of sum- 
mer was no time to look for work in New York, any- 
way; and that he must beg Mr. Ray ford not again 
to intrude upon his valuable time. He relented a 
little as he saw how white and drawn Jack's face 
looked, and said that if anything did turn up 
he certainly would communicate with Mr. Rayford 
at once. And then, with a show of regretful cordi- 
ality that was not entirely assumed, he shook hands 
with Mr. Rayford, and politely showed him to the 
door. It really did annoy him to turn the young fel- 
low adrift — but what else could he do.f* 

For the first time since they had arrived in New 
York, the dinner that Jack and Prudence ate that 
night was a melancholy one. When Jack came home 
and told her what a knock-down he had had. Pru- 
dence had done her best to comfort him. In truth, 
to her the blow did not seem nearly so serious a mat- 
ter as it seemed to him; for by heredity and train- 
ing they looked at the economic affairs of life from 
widely different points of view. Jack had been 
brought up to regard running in debt as a crime only 
a trifle less deadly than those expressly forbidden by 
the Ten Commandments; and he had been accus- 
tomed all his life to rigorous effort to keep his outlay 
within the limits of a small but certain income. Pru- 
dence, whose conscious years had been passed in the 
household of her many times bankrupt stepfather, 
regarded running in debt as one of life's necessary 

36 



AT THE CASA NAPOL]£ON 

evils; and her only notion of regulating her outlay 
was to spend what money she was lucky enough to 
have until it was all gone. When this point was 
reached, her simple financial creed told her^that un- 
less what she wanted was to be found in the stock 
of her stepfather's store, she must go without it. 
And out of the up-and-down life that her step- 
father had led her — of comfort when, with fresh 
credit, he had taken a fresh start; of downright priva- 
tion when, as bankruptcy drew near again, ready 
money was all gone and the stock in the store was 
nearly exhausted — she had acquired a philosophic 
indifference to poverty, and a most unphilosophic 
faith in the certainty that something was bound to 
turn up just as the situation was becoming desperate. 

But on this dismal night, when she tried to com- 
fort Jack by proving out of the shifts of her past very 
shifty life how certain it was that bad luck couldn't 
last, Jack refused to recognize the soundness of her 
reasoning and declined to be comforted. From the 
standpoint of his training and experience, the man 
who accepted without serious alarm a situation that 
involved a steady outlay, to meet which there was 
not even a prospect of an income, was moving with 
a dangerous rapidity in the direction of positive 
crime. The enunciation of this novel doctrine in- 
terested Prudence: it struck her as both curious and 
original. 

On the whole, it was a good thing for Jack that 
Prudence did not share his economical views. Hav- 
ing been all her life accustomed to believe that there 
was no need to worry so long as there was any ready 

37 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

money in the house at all, she was not seriously cast 
down as the summer days slipped away and Jack's 
manifold efforts to get a standing-room in New York 
slipped away with them. She was stayed by an ab- 
solutely unquenchable belief that his genius was of 
the towering kind that in the end must command 
success. Holding to this conviction, she was not in 
the least dismayed by his repeated checks in his ef- 
fort to live out his handsome destiny. And this con- 
fidence in him, and the constant cheerfulness that 
Prudence logically maintained because of it, did give 
substantial comfort to Jack as the days went on until 
they became months and he still remained stranded 
in enforced idleness. While such love for him and 
faith in him continued, he thought, he had no right 
to despair. Therefore he answered advertisements 
at the average rate of three a day; and did his best 
to stand pluckily up to the steady fire of failure, and 
to emulate with a pretended cheerfulness her cheer- 
fulness that was entirely genuine. His pretense did 
not for a moment deceive her; but she, pretending 
that she was deceived, deceived him very satisfac- 
torily. 

In the early days of his apprenticeship to answer- 
ing advertisements — the dead season of summer hav- 
ing not quite set in — he had been offered two or 
three berths that later he would have accepted very 
gladly. The best of these was that of entry clerk in 
a wholesale dry-goods house at nine hundred dollars 
a year. He had declined that position promptly. 
It was absurd, he thought, to work in New York 
for three hundred dollars a year less than he had 

38 



AT THE CASA NAPOLEON 

been paid in the country; and especially absurd to 
accept a place that would give him only twenty- 
six dollars a year more than his actual board and 
lodging. He and Prudence laughed a good deal over 
the way that they would dress and pay all their inci- 
dental expenses out of that margin. He remembered 
these jokes rather bitterly, one day late in Septem- 
ber, when he found himself seriously considering 
the advisability of accepting — of course only until 
he should be able to get something better — the posi- 
tion of invoice clerk, with a firm of exporters just 
starting in business, at a salary of ten dollars a week 
— to which was added the problematical induce- 
ment of a chance to grow up with the house. He told 
the two exporters — they were pleasant young fel- 
lows, not much older than himself — that he would 
give them an answer the next day; and they urged 
him to make it an answer in the affirmative, for they 
liked his looks, and his references — to the car-build- 
ing firm in the country — were as good as references 
could be. The thought had entered his mind more 
than once to try to get back to that pleasant resting- 
place in life that he had abandoned so lightly; but 
for very shame — after all the tall talk that he had 
indulged in before starting out on his own account 
into the world — he would not bring himself as yet 
to make the admission that his effort to better him- 
self had been a lamentable failure. 

When he came home and told Prudence of the 
offer that he had received, her counsels, for once, 
were in keeping with her name. The practice of her 
shifty stepfather had been always to take what he 

39 



AT THE CASA NAPOLEON 

could get. "Little things," said this expert in bank- 
ruptcy, "were not to be sneezed at when you couldn't 
get big ones." Prudence had a great respect for the 
business capacity of her stepfather, and in the light 
of his words of wisdom she advised Jack to accept 
the very small thing that now was offered to him, 
and to make the most of it until he got something 
better — as he certainly would, she added with en- 
tire honesty, in a very little while. Ten dollars a 
week would pay more than half their expenses, she 
pointed out; and that would make what was left of 
their ready money — there still remained to them 
rather more than a hundred dollars — go more than 
twice as far: which piece of arithmetic was abso- 
lutely incontrovertible. In short. Prudence mani- 
fested an amount of worldly wisdom that really was 
quite astonishing; and that, in the end. Jack ad- 
mitted was wholly convincing. And the upshot of 
her preaching was that he went down-town the next 
morning and accepted his ten-dollar-a-week clerk- 
ship, and straightway entered upon the discharge 
of his duties. 

Jack found that getting to work, even in so poor 
a way, did him good. He was a capital bookkeeper, 
and he naturally enjoyed doing what he knew he 
could do thoroughly well. And when the young ex- 
porters discovered that he was living in the thick of 
Spanish Americans, and that he could talk Spanish 
fairly well — for Prudence had lived up to her high 
resolves in regard to that language and had made 
Jack live up with her — they became quite excited 
over the possibility of fresh captures through his 

40 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

exertions of Spanish-American trade. They would 
make it an object to him to rustle, they declared; 
and they did make it an object by offering upon the 
fruits of his "rusthng" a very liberal commission. 



VIII 

It is not to be supposed that two such friendly 
young people as Jack and Prudence could remain in 
so friendly a household as that of the Casa Napo- 
leon for a whole summer long without coming into 
tolerably close relations with the rather variegated 
company dwelling there. About these young people 
there was a frankness and an innocence that Madame 
— in a confidence to Monsieur Duvent — declared 
were tres piquant; and that certainly had the effect 
of attracting toward them the better sides of the 
not especially frank and by no means innocent com- 
pany that abode in the little hotel. 

There was something humorous — that is to say, 
for the true meaning of this word has been obscured 
by ill use of it, something on the border line between 
tears and laughter — in the way that the several 
shady characters frequenting the Casa Napoleon 
made their good will manifest. Monsieur Duvent, 
who came to the hotel so regularly because of the 
opportunities which he there found of meeting rich 
young Spanish Americans whom he might profitably 
introduce into the respectable gaming estabhshment 
of which he was a part, talked to Jack in a very 
fatherly way about the dangers of a great city, and 

41 



AT THE CASA NAPOLEON 

especially warned him to give gambling a wide berth. 
From the fund of his own ample experience, he drew 
such a picture of the evils of gaming that Jack was 
seriously shocked by it. It was the more to Mon- 
sieur Duvent's credit that he acted this fatherly role 
not long after Jack came to the Casa Napoleon, and 
while he was still in possession, as was known to his 
mentor, of several hundred dollars. That Colonel 
Withersby did not attempt to secure any of these 
dollars on a call-loan — and a tremendous amount of 
calling usually had to be gone through with before 
these loans, which the colonel had a fine knack at 
negotiating, could be made to come back again — 
was due in part, probably, to the fact that when he 
first met Jack he had just returned from striking 
it rich in Bogota. But to the credit of the colonel 
be it said that, later in the summer, when his Bogota 
dollars were all gone, and while some of Jack's 
American dollars still remained, he dehberately ab- 
stained from rectifying his frontiers at the expense 
of Jack's very defenseless territory. He'd be blanked, 
said the colonel, in his bluflP military way, in the 
course of a frank talk with Mrs. Mortimer, in which 
his impecuniosity had been touched upon and this 
method of relieving it had been suggested, if he'd 
got as low down yet as to make a strike that way. 
And Mrs. Mortimer applauded his good resolutions. 
Not less well disposed toward Jack and Prudence 
were the ladies of the establishment. Polly Harri- 
son (professionally known as Violet Bream), who 
was as kind-hearted a natural-born soubrette as ever 
mistakenly attempted high tragedy, quite fell in 

42 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

love with Prudence — and was so entirely sincere 
about it that she was not in the least jealous when 
Mr. Claude Dunbar, that is to say, Ned, her hus- 
band, frankly admitted that he was in love with 
Prudence himself. And these good souls took Jack 
to their hearts also — for it made them think, as Polly 
explained to Prudence, of the very happy time when 
they were ten years younger, and were newly mar- 
ried themselves. "You see how handsome my dear 
boy is now," Polly said, proudly; "but I wish that 
you could have seen him then! And if your hus- 
band is as good and as kind to you as mine has been 
to me," she went on, and there was a little tremble 
in her voice that made the heart of Prudence thrill 
sympathetically, "you need not fear any troubles 
that may come to you." Miss Bream and Mr. Dun- 
bar were playing a summer engagement at one of 
the minor theatres, and they were kindness itself in 
giving Jack and Prudence box-office orders. It grew 
a little monotonous, to be sure, after they had seen 
the same farcical performance ten or fifteen times; 
but it was better to see it over and over again, Pru- 
dence said, than not see anything; and she added, 
a trifle ambiguously, that it was not right to look a 
gift theatre ticket in the mouth. 

Mrs. Myrtle Vane betook herself, about the ist 
of July, to Saratoga — ^whence she wrote to her New 
York and Western papers letters which were badly 
constructed, and which contained a good many gram- 
matical eccentricities, but which were as full of 
"spice" as letters possibly could be. And as neither 
the editors nor the readers of the journals which she 

43 



AT THE CASA NAPOLEON 

had on her string, as she expressed it, had even a 
rudimentary knowledge of Hterary style, and were 
accustomed to grammatical forms fit to send a thrill 
of agony through the dry bones of the late Mr. 
Lindley Murray, her letters, as usual, were a great 
success. Before she left town, Mrs. Vane made very 
friendly advances toward Prudence; and when she 
returned to town early in September, she greeted 
her young friend with effusion. Prudence was quite 
overawed by coming into such cordial relations with 
a literary person; and she felt that there must be 
something all wrong with her own literary tastes, 
because the reading of Mrs. Vane's newspaper let- 
ters always made her feel as though she must at once 
give herself a thorough washing. 

Mrs. Mortimer stayed in town all summer. The 
summer was her season of harvest, for then it was 
that the rich Cubans — fleeing from the heat of their 
island home — came northward. Mrs. Mortimer 
manifested a great friendliness for Prudence at first; 
but later she rather drew away from her. Possibly, 
perceiving the sweet innocence which was in the 
nature of Prudence, and which shone out in all her 
acts and words, this drawing away was a sign of a 
still better friendliness. It is certain that this lady, 
whose most striking characteristic was not shyness, 
was truly shy in her dealings with this young girl. 
Sometimes Prudence, looking up suddenly, would 
find Mrs. Mortimer's eyes fixed upon her with an 
expression of sadness and longing that was almost 
tragical, and that Prudence could not even remotely 
understand. It occurred to her that perhaps Mrs. 

44 



>r3 

a 
o 

w 

n 
w 

o 
a 
r 
a 




AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

Mortimer had had a daughter once who, had she 
lived, would be about the age that she. Prudence, 
was now; and it is not impossible that Mrs. Morti- 
mer at these times really was thinking of some such 
innocent young life that long ago had come to an 
untimely end. As the summer advanced, bringing 
the rich Cubans with it, Mrs. Mortimer maintained 
over Prudence a dragon-like guard; breaking up all 
attempts on the part of these foreign gentlemen to 
open conversations with her — ^which she was dis- 
posed to encourage, for the sake of practising her 
newly acquired Spanish — and in all ways very vigor- 
ously standing them ofF. Colonel Withersby and 
Monsieur Duvent frequently chuckled over these 
demonstrations. "She's a keen one," said the col- 
onel. ** Protection to home industries is her rule; 
and you can bet your life that she's not going to 
stand any nonsense like free trade." And Monsieur 
Duvent, stroking his gray imperial, answered : *' Oui, 
monsieur; she 'as the level 'ead, this madame." Yet 
for once these keen judges of human nature, failing 
to take into consideration a range of thoughts quite 
beyond their comprehension, arrived at conclusions 
which were not absolutely correct. 

But the most surprising proof of friendliness mani- 
fested toward Jack and Prudence was found in the 
fact that Don Anastasio — ^who made out the bills, 
under Madame's supervision — refrained from add- 
ing to Jack's account any of the ingenious over- 
charges that he was in the habit of adding to ac- 
counts in general, and in the concoction of which 
long experience had given him great skill. Possibly, 

45 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

at first, Madame may have checked him in this mat- 
ter; but as time went on no supervision of this sort 
was required to keep him honest in his renderings. 
Indeed, when Prudence fell ill, very many of the 
perfectly legitimate extras which ought to have gone 
into Jack's bills stayed out of them — and with Ma- 
dame's entire consent and hearty approval. They 
were very far from being saints, Madame and Don 
Anastasio, but beneath the hard coating of guile 
with which time and, more especially, many years 
of inn-keeping had overlaid and chilled their hearts, 
there still remained a soft spot in which was warmth; 
and this warmth went out freely to "the children" 
—as they presently fell into the way of calling the 
very guileless young couple whom fate had driven 
within their doors. When Jack at last settled to 
work with the firm of young exporters, Madame 
made a little feast for them; and as the very crown 
and glory of this feast brought up with her own 
hands from the cellar a bottle of her rare old bur- 
gundy — which neither Jack nor Prudence in the least 
appreciated, and which, to save it from the desecra- 
tion of being mixed with water, she and Don Ana- 
stasio were compelled to drink hurriedly themselves. 
Especially was Don Anastasio delighted with the 
efforts which Jack and Prudence made, and which 
by the end of summer had achieved a reasonable 
degree of success, to acquire the Spanish tongue. 
That they seriously wished to speak his own beau- 
tiful language was a form of flattery, as delicate as 
it was unintentional, that went straight to his heart. 
It was his strong desire, he told them, that they 

46 



AT THE CASA NAPOLEON 

should know and love his very dear friend the Senor 
Estrano, who was due to arrive at any time now, 
and he much preferred that Spanish should be the 
speech in which this friendship should begin. The 
Seiior Estrano, it was true, did speak English — in- 
deed, he was an Englishman, Don Anastasio thought 
— but long use of Spanish had made it his most 
familiar language; and then, if they would pardon 
him for saying so, Spanish was the only language in 
which could be adequately expressed the feelings of 
the heart. 

Of his dear friend, Don Anastasio never tired of 
talking. There was not a virtue under heaven that 
he did not attribute to him: in war he was a very 
Paladin; he was as generous as he was brave; he 
was tenderness and goodness personified; he was 
muy simpdtico, muy fino — ^which words, Don Ana- 
stasio explained, meant vastly more than their literal 
English equivalent of very sympathetic and very 
fine. And when the Seiior Estrano actually arrived, 
it was as though a whirlwind had struck the Casa 
Napoleon — so tumultuous was the outburst of Don 
Anastasio's joy. Such huggings, and hearty pattings 
of each other's backs — punctuated by pauses in which 
they affectionately held each other ofF at arms'- 
length that they might also feast their eyes — as 
these two warm-hearted old boys indulged in made 
a spectacle the like of which Jack and Prudence had 
never beheld. It gave them a wonderful notion of 
Spanish-American warm-heartedness, and also added 
to the very cordial feeling on their part toward the 
Senor Estrano that had been created in advance of 

47 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

his coming by Don Anastasio's laudations of his many 
excellences. 

As they came to know him better, this feeling 
toward Don Anastasio's friend steadily grew warm- 
er and stronger. He was a simple-minded, sweet- 
hearted man, very gentle in his ways; and in his 
thoughts and actions there seemed to be at all times 
a tender and considerate kindliness. Toward Pru- 
dence he presently manifested an affection so fatherly 
that even Mrs. Mortimer was not suspicious of it; 
and Jack and he — Prudence declared that they 
were wonderfully alike — were warm friends in no 
time. When he found that Jack was having a hard 
time of it, and that he could help him by making his 
purchases of supplies from the firm of young ex- 
porters, he jumped at the chance thus offered — only 
regretting that his heaviest orders must be placed 
with firms with which he had standing contracts. 
Jack was sorry too; but he was most devoutly thank- 
ful for the hundred dollars or so that came to him 
thus in the way of commissions — for at this juncture 
he had arrived at the point when his reserve of ready 
money was all gone, and the problem confronted 
him of meeting a fixed outlay with just half its 
amount of fixed income. 

IX 

But a much more serious trouble came to Jack 
about this time: Prudence fell ill. For a good while 
past, as he perceived in looking backward, she had 
not seemed quite herself. Slowly, so slowly that he 

48 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

scarcely had noticed it, she had fallen into a low 
way. She lost her appetite, and her spirits flagged. 
Madame perceived this change more clearly than 
Jack did; for Jack was away all day, and Prudence 
did her best to be as cheerful as possible when he 
came home at night. It was Madame who advised 
Jack that Doctor Theophile should be consulted. 
He was a very good doctor, she said; and he was 
good also, she added, in that he charged but little 
and never was pressing with his bills. And when the 
doctor came — and looked very grave over the case 
that he was called to deal with — Prudence thank- 
fully gave up trying to seem well for Jack's sake, 
and took to her bed and stayed there. There was a 
dull languor pressing upon her. She spoke little 
and slept a great deal. Doctor Theophile confided to 
Madame that he would feel much more comfortable 
if his patient would develop a raging fever — or any 
other decisive symptom that he could decisively 
lay hold upon. 

Quite a commotion went through the Casa Napo- 
leon when it was known that the little body, whose 
hold was so firm upon so many hearts, lay ill. Polly 
Harrison, who heard about it just as she was start- 
ing out to buy a new bonnet— and a new bonnet was 
a good deal of an event in Polly's life — went in- 
stantly to Perceval's and bought a mould of beef 
jelly that she carried to Prudence with her own 
hands, and with her own arms hugged her, while 
she besought her to get well at once. Polly put 
aside the remainder of her bonnet money, to be used 
in the interest of the invalid as occasion might re- 

49 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

quire. Mrs. Myrtle Vane, being short of cash at the 
moment, sat down quickly at a writing-table and 
wrote such a spicy article about a divorce suit then 
pending in the courts that the editor of a prominent 
newspaper gladly gave her fifteen dollars for it for 
use in his next Sunday edition — and the very first 
thing bought with that fifteen dollars (the whole 
of it being sacredly set apart as a relief fund) was a 
bottle of Madame's rare old burgundy, which Mrs. 
Myrtle Vane herself carried to Prudence and pre- 
sented with every mark of sincere affection. Col- 
onel Withersby, who was just returned from a flying 
trip to Valparaiso, where he had made a turn in 
tramways that had filled his pockets most refresh- 
ingly, was all unused to expressing sympathy such 
as the present case demanded, and was rather put to 
his trumps — until the happy thought occurred to 
him, evolved out of his memory of the joy that his 
mother had derived from a like present, to send Pru- 
dence a large illustrated family Bible. Being by 
the grace of heaven a member of the polite nation, 
Monsieur Duvent knew precisely what to do, and did 
it promptly. On his way to his respectable gaming 
establishment he purchased a huge bouquet and a 
five-pound box of bonbons — which offering he at 
once sent to Prudence, by one of the employes of the 
gambling-rooms, with his card. 

Mrs. Mortimer alone failed to take part in this 
general manifestation of sympathy. But she waited 
for Jack on the stairs, and said to him, in a voice 
that trembled and broke a little: "I haven't sent 
anything to your wife, Mr. Rayford, because I 

50 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

thought that — that — ^with my money, you know, 
I had better not. But if I can do anything myself,'* 
she went on, eagerly, "if I can help nurse her — 
that is, if you'll let me come near her — or do any- 
thing at all, oh, you don't know what a comfort 
doing it will be to me! I might do errands, perhaps; 
and if you would rather not have me come into the 
room, I can sit in the passage and be ready to get 
somebody when she calls. I may do that, mayn't 
I, Mr. Rayford? And you don't mind my loving 
her, do you? Please let me love her — she won't 
know about it, and it can't do her any harm." And 
as Mrs. Mortimer turned away. Jack perceived — 
he could not make head nor tail of her extraordinary 
outburst — that her far from genuine complexion 
had been temporarily ruined by entirely genuine 
tears. He thanked her very warmly; and when he 
came in again he found her sitting in the passage 
just outside the door of the little room in which 
Prudence lay. She would not enter the room; 
and during a good part of the ensuing three 
weeks she maintained her watch in the pas- 
sageway. The Cuban season was not ended, 
either. 

The three weeks that followed were the blackest 
that Jack had ever known. Prudence did not get 
actively worse, but each day she was a little weaker 
than she had been the day before. 

"Ah, mon DieuT^ Doctor Theophile exclaimed. 
"If she vould but 'ave a fievre hrulante — if she vould 
but 'ave any sort of a being sick that I could take 
'old of vith my two 'ands ! I cannot make the good 

6 51 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

battle, M^sieu', for 'ere is nothing vith vich it is for 
me to stand up and fight T' 

Jack explained matters to the firm of young ex- 
porters, and they were as good-hearted about it as 
they could be. They told him to stay at home until 
his wife was better, and they sent his salary of ten 
dollars up to him every Saturday night — ^which was 
a good deal for a young and by no means flourishing 
firm of exporters to do. Jack scarcely left the little 
room all day long. Only, acting under Doctor Theo- 
phile's imperative orders, he went out every after- 
noon and walked for half an hour in Washington 
Square. It would not do for him to fall ill too, the 
doctor said; and Jack perceived that this state- 
ment was strictly true. 

During these short absences Madame would sit 
by Prudence and watch her; or Polly Harrison, or 
Mrs. Myrtle Vane. Jack had asked Mrs. Mortimer 
to take this place, but she had declined. It was bet- 
ter, she said, that she should stay outside. And 
every day the Senor Estrano would come and sit, 
sometimes for an hour at a time, beside the bed on 
which Prudence lay, looking at her the while with 
loving, longing eyes — as though by the sheer strength 
of loving her he would make her tighten again her 
slowly loosing grasp on life. And Don Anastasio 
also would pay Prudence short visits — and would 
go away again, with eyes unduly red for reading, 
to seek comfort in the Siete Partidas of Alonzo the 
Wise. But it was cold comfort that Don Anastasio 
found in the wisdom of the King of Castile. Great 
though his wisdom assuredly was, it did not suffice 

52 



AT THE CASA NAPOLEON 

to put brightness into the shadows which fall as a 
young life fades out from time into eternity. 

It was late in the third week that the doctor, com- 
ing to make his morning visit, saw a gleam of hope 
in the fact that his patient unquestionably was 
feverish. But with his hope came also great anxiety. 
As he went away he confided to Madame that, one 
way or the other, the case would be settled within 
twenty-four hours. If Prudence had enough strength 
left in her to pull her through this crisis, all would 
be well; if she had not — and the doctor nodded in 
a way that made Madame understand. 

For Jack that was the worst day of all. Prudence 
was not exactly delirious, but she grew more and 
more excited as the fever increased; and she talked 
— and this was so hard for Jack to bear — in much 
the lively way that was natural with her when she 
was quite well. She seemed to forget all their 
troubles, and rattled on about their expeditions 
around New York, and their theatre-goings, and the 
good time that they were having generally. In the 
afternoon her thoughts took another turn. She re- 
membered that they were getting steadily poorer, 
and that now, because of her illness, their outlay 
would be increased. She fretted over it all, and de- 
vised feverish plans for extricating themselves from 
the tangle in which they were involved. Then the 
thought of Jack's long-lost and highly mythical 
half-uncle drifted into her mind, and with it her de- 
sire that Jack should write to him. **Have you 
written to him yet. Jack?" she asked; and Jack, 
with whom tact was not a strong point at the best 

S3 



AT THE CASA NAPOLEON 

of times, and who now was very little short of heart- 
broken, said bluntly that he had not. 

"Oh, Jack, it is cruel of you not to write that let- 
ter when I want you to so much. I'd do it for you, 
Jack, if you asked me to. Do be a dear boy and sit 
down and write it now." 

Just then Doctor Theophile came for his after- 
noon visit. Prudence turned to him and said: 

"Doctor, won't you please make Jack write the 
letter. It worries me so much that he won't do it. 
Writing it can do no harm, you know; and it may 
do us so much good. Please make him do it, doctor." 
On her face there was a look of great trouble and 
anxiety. 

" Vous avez raison, Madame," said Doctor Theo- 
phile briskly. "It is mos' necessaire that 'e write 
this letter a Vinstant — vat you call at vunce." And 
then he added to Jack, speaking in a whisper: "I 
do not know, M'sieu', of vat it is that Madame speak. 
But if it is vat cannot be done, you mus' make to 
appear that you do it. Her life is the price. You 
understand ? Now is la crise. She turns now to live 
or die. Allez, M'sieu' — 'urry to write!" 

"Of course I'll write the letter, dear," Jack said. 
"I'll do it this very minute. You shall see me do it; 
and then you'll know that it's really done." 

"Oh, thank you. Jack," Prudence answered, and 
the troubled expression left her face. "Write it, 
and then read it to me; and then, do you know, I 
think I'll go to sleep." There was a look of satis- 
faction in Doctor Theophile's face as Prudence spoke 
of going to sleep; and his satisfaction increased as 

S4 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

he touched her hand and found that it was sHghtly 
moist. 

Jack went to the bureau on which the Httle port- 
foHo that belonged to Prudence lay, and braced him- 
self to the writing of the letter. There came into 
his mind their light talk about it, that June day 
when they first took possession so gaily of the quar- 
ters where such bitter sorrow had come to them. 
He knew what Prudence wanted him to write, and 
with the very blackness of death around him he 
wrote. 

"Now read it to me," Prudence said; **and be 
quick. Jack, for I am so sleepy!" And Jack read: 

Casa Napoleon, Octoher 17th. 
To William SirahaUy Esq.^ South America: 

Dear Half-uncle William, — I am the son of your half- 
sister Mary, who married John Rayford, my father. Just at 
present I stand urgently in need of your assistance. My wife 
is sick, and I have very little money. Please let me have at 
once a check for ^1000; and please make arrangements promptly 
for adopting us as your son and daughter, and for taking us 
home to live with you. An early answer will oblige your affec- 
tionate half-nephew John Rayford. 

*^Thank you. Jack," Prudence said, drowsily. 
"That is a very nice letter, and I am sure that it will 
make everything right. Just kiss me, please; and 
then I'll take a nap." Jack laid the letter on the 
bureau and bent to kiss her — her forehead was cool 
and moist — but she already was asleep. 

Doctor Theophile placed a friendly hand on Jack's 
shoulder and so led him out into the passage. Shut- 

55 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

ting the door behind them softly, he drew a long 
breath and exclaimed: ^^ Nous avons 6chappe helle 
— vat you call 'ad the close shave, M'sieu' ! It vas 
the writing of the letter by vich Madame was calmed 
that has saved her to be alive. At the good hour 
vas my coming to make you write." And then he 
went on jubilantly: "Now all is good. She vill 
sleep like a shoe for an hour; perhaps she vill sleep 
for two hours. Ven she vakes she vill be as veak 
as vater — but she vill 'ave start to make herself 
veil. You vill not be a vidow, my dear boy; she is 
save, this dear vife; she vill live to make you ,'appy 
in many a glad year. And now vat is good for you, 
M'sieu', is to take a valk in the fresh air. I vill call 
the Madame from below; and ven she comes, do 
you go. It is vat you mos' need." 

All that Jack could say was, "God bless you, 
doctor!" and when Madame came smiling up the 
stairs, and actually put her arms around him and 
kissed him, he pretty well broke down. Then he 
went out for his walk. His entire fortune at that 
moment consisted of ninety-four cents — and he was 
the very happiest man in New York! 

X 

When Jack came back, after an hour of vigorous 
walking, Prudence had just roused up, and was taking 
the beef-tea that Madame had ready for her. "It 
is really, absurd. Jack," she said, "I don't feel 
strong enough to lift my little finger, and yet I feel 
better and more like myself than I have felt for weeks. 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

But, oh, I am sleepy T' And she drowsed off once 
more into sleep. 

All had gone well, Madame whispered. Prudence 
had slept so soundly that she had not even stirred 
when Don Guillermo had come in before Madame 
could stop him. He had kept the watch in her place 
for a while, she said, and had reported that during 
the hour or more of his watching Prudence had not 
so much as stirred a hand. Having delivered this 
cheering communication, Madame put her finger 
on her lips and left the room. She bore the good 
news down-stairs triumphantly — it was just dinner- 
time — and Colonel Withersby, still flush with the 
winnings of his Valparaiso tramways, at once set up 
champagne for everybody, in order that the general 
happiness might be fittingly celebrated. 

Jack softly took off his shoes and put on his slip- 
pers, preparatory to settling down to his watch by 
the bedside. He stood by the bureau, on which the 
gaslight, shaded from the bed, shone brightly. He 
looked for the absurd letter that he had written; for 
the doctor had said that the writing of that letter 
had saved his wife's life, and thereafter it would be 
as long as he lived the most precious of his posses- 
sions. But he was surprised to find that the sheet 
that he had written was gone; and still more sur- 
prised to find in its place a sealed letter directed to 
him in a strange hand. And when he broke the seal 
he read; 

Casa Napoleon, October lyth. 

My dear Half-nephew, — You will be more than this to me 
now, for you shall be truly my son, and your dear wife, whom 

57 



AT THE CASA NAP0L£0N 

I have learned to love so well, shall be my daughter. I do not 
know how this strange happiness has come to pass; but there 
will be plenty of time to tell it all when we get home to Vene- 
zuela. I am glad that you know Spanish; but had you known 
it better you might have guessed how easily our Spanish friends 
would turn into Estrano my name. A warm abrazo awaits 
you when you have read this — in the arms of your half-uncle, 
who is also now your father. William Strahan. 

P. S. — The check that you ask for is inclosed. There is much 
more ready for you in the bank. 

And SO black Care, and blacker Sorrow, in the 
selfsame day were driven out from the lives of Jack 
and Prudence; and in their place came Love, and 
with her Joy. 

Of the tumult that reigned for a time in the Casa 
Napoleon when this wonderful glad news was known, 
words cannot tell. Colonel Withersby declared with 
his customary cheerful vigor that it was the blank- 
edest best thing he'd ever heard of, and that he'd 
be blanked if he didn't mean to celebrate it by get- 
ting drunk and staying drunk for a week! And it is 
only just to the colonel to add — in view of the fact 
that his word was of the same value as his bond — 
that on this happy occasion his imprecated avowal 
of intentions was very literally and exactly fulfilled. 
Monsieur Duvent was so upset by the joyful shock 
that that evening, for the first and only time in his 
life, he made a misdeal. Miss Violet Bream and 
Mr. Claude Dunbar, otherwise known as Polly and 
Ned Harrison, voted that they were entitled on the 
strength of the good luck that had come to these 
friends of theirs to a spree of their own; and, having 

58 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

a night ofF from the stage, made their spree take the 
characteristic form of going as a part of the audi- 
ence to another theatre, and having a jolly little 
supper all to themselves afterward. Mrs. Myrtle 
Vane exhibited her gladness in the form of self- 
sacrifice; for she did not write it all up for the Sun- 
day papers. Mrs. Mortimer was not heard from — 
in the midst of the excitement she quietly left the 
hotel. 

As for Madame, she was as radiant as though this 
great good fortune had come to a daughter of her 
own. And Don Anastasio, quoting from the twen- 
tieth law of the Fourth Partida of the wise Alonzo 
of Castile, declared that he who cares with the love 
of a father for a child that is not his own wins to 
himself thereby that child's love and duty; and he 
added that of such strong friendship, as thus as- 
suredly would be formed, King Alonzo had written 
in the seventh law of that same Fourth Partida: 
"Neither for sickness, nor for poverty, nor for any 
other ill shall true friendship be broken; but, rather, 
by the stress and trial thus laid upon it shall true 
friendship be made yet more strong, and shall friend 
yet the more closely cleave unto friend." 



THE EFFERATI FAMILY 




:N the afternoon of Monday, April 
30, 1888, simultaneously with the ar- 
rival at that hostelry of the EfFerati 
Family, a storm of limited area but 
great violence was developed and 
was central over the Casa Napoleon. 
This storm may be said to have come in a two- 
horse carriage. Its negative pole was the driver of 
the carriage, Mr. Michael O'Hallahan. Its positive 
pole was made up of Signor Giuseppe Garibaldi 
EfFerati, Signora Vittoria Emmanuela EfFerati, the 
Signorini Vittorio Emmanuele and Umberto EfFerati, 
and Signorina Margherita EfFerati — in conjunction 
with two trunks, three portmanteaux, five hand- 
bags, and the cases inclosing four mandolins and a 
double-strung guitar. It is something of a mystery 
how this load ever was piled into and upon a single 
carriage; but it was — and it made a pretty good- 
sized heap upon the pavement in front of the Casa 
Napoleon when it was there discharged. 

It was when the process of unloading was com- 
pleted and Signor EfFerati tendered to Mr. O'Hal- 

60 




SIGNOR EFFERATI TENDERED TO MR. O HALLAHAN TWO DOLLARS 



THE EFFERATI FAMILY 

lahan the sum of two dollars — ^which sum had been 
agreed upon by the high contracting parties as the 
fare that should be paid for bringing the EfFerati 
Family and its belongings from the Desbrosses 
Street ferry to the hotel — that the positive and nega- 
tive poles of this latent tempest came together with 
a bang! 

Mr. O'Hallahan did not extend his hand to accept 
the money that Signor Efferati offered to him. On 
the contrary, he stepped back two paces, drew his 
head up proudly, closed his lips with great firmness 
about the stump of an extinguished cigar that was 
between them, and regarded the two-dollar bill with 
a cold and haughty stare. 

"He is your money,'' said Signor EfFerati. 

"Oi'll be dommed if it's me money," answered 
Mr. O'Hallahan. "It's foive dollars oi'm afther 
chargin' yez — an' not a hair's-bridth of a dommed 
cint less!" 

Upon the usually genial face of Signor EfFerati 
a flush appeared, and his short and round and usu- 
ally genial person began to quiver with a righteous 
rage. This barefaced swindle was more than he 
could stand. 

"Robber!" he hissed, "take your money — or go 
without any money at all." But as he spoke these 
words in his native Italian, Mr. O'Hallahan could 
only infer that they were in the nature of a demand 
that the terms of the treaty should be fulfilled; which 
inference was confirmed by the fact that Signor 
EfFerati shook the two-dollar bill violently beneath 
Mr. O'Hallahan's nose. 

6i 



AT THE CASA NAP0L£0N 

"You did say!" struck in Signora EfFerati; who 
perceived the Hngual comphcation that had arisen; 
and who also felt that it was time for her, in her ca- 
pacity of family treasurer, to resist this assault upon 
the family purse. 

"Sf, you did say!" cried Signor EfFerati, clutch- 
ing eagerly at the English phrase, and hurling it at 
Mr. O'Hallahan in a tone of tragical command. 

"Oi 'did say,' did oi? An' phwat did oi say, y' 
blatherin' Eytallian idjit? Oi said oi'd drive yez 
frum the ferry, an' mebbe a choild an' a box or two, 
fur two dollars. But did oi say oi'd drive th' whole 
dommed Eytallian nation an' all their dommed mon- 
keys an' all their dommed hand-organs frum th' 
ferry for two dollars ? Answer me that, y' dommed 
fat EytalKan baste, an' pay me the foive dollars y' 
owe me, before I knock th' stuffin' outen yer fat 
body an' yer dom two big oiyes inter one!" And, 
being thus delivered, Mr. O'Hallahan with great 
rapidity divested himself of his hat and coat and 
tossed these portions of his apparel upon the box of 
his carriage, placed carefully beside them the rem- 
nant of his cigar, and in this warlike disarray ad- 
vanced toward Signor EfFerati with his hands 
clinched and his arms raised. 

That the flush of rage at that moment disappeared 
from Signor EfFerati's round face, and was succeeded 
by a somewhat pasty pallor, probably was due to 
the rude shock inflicted upon his highly strung ar- 
tistic nature by Mr. O'Hallahan's very obvious in- 
tention to submit a difference of opinion in regard 
to an abstract financial matter to the coarse and in- 

62 



THE EFFERATI FAMILY 

conclusive arbitrament of personal combat; and it 
doubtless was this same artistic supersensitiveness 
which led him, as Mr. O'Hallahan advanced, to 
step hastily behind the pile of luggage and musical 
instruments — ^where his faithful consort instantly- 
enfolded him in her arms. 

"Calm thyself, Seppino!" she cried. "Calm thy- 
self! I, thy wife, implore thee ! Be not overcome by 
thy fierce nature. What would happen to us shouldst 
thou kill this wretched man? In this barbarous 
country thy own death would follow. Thou wouldst 
be hung. Thy wife would be a widow. Thy chil- 
dren would be fatherless — and our combination 
would be broken up by the loss of its first mandolin! 
Govern then thy anger for our sakes. Pay anything 
to this brute rather than thus plunge us all into 
ruinous despair!" 

While Signora EfFerati delivered this moving ap- 
peal, she and Signor EfFerati were circling rapidly 
together around the pile of luggage; which they thus 
continuously interposed between themselves and the 
violent Mr. O'Hallahan, who rapidly circled after 
them. The younger EfFerati, standing in a row upon 
the steps of the Casa Napoleon and regarding 
anxiously the rotation of their imperilled parents, 
were a prey to the liveliest emotions of alarm. 
Behind them, drawn thither by the sounds of the 
affray, stood the nominal head of the Casa Napo- 
leon, Don Anastasio, together with the Cuban 
waiter, Telesforo, the French waiter, Leon, and the 
French chambermaid, Marie. An interested crowd 
had collected in the street — the diverse languages 

63 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

spoken by the various members of which being a 
sufficient indication of the proximity of the South 
Fifth Avenue approach to the Tower of Babel. 

"Sacrifice thy anger for my sake, for all of our 
sakes, Seppino/' again urged the Signora. "Do not 
imbrue thy hands with his vile blood. Give him 
what he demands, and let him go." To which she 
added, addressing Mr. O'Hallahan, "We do pay." 

Upon the utterance of these words of surrender, 
Mr. O'Hallahan instantly ceased his belligerent 
demonstration; and as he resumed his coat and hat 
and fragment of cigar, resumed also his Milesian 
urbanity. "It's a rale leddy that y' are, ma'am, 
from the top o' your handsome head t' th' tips o' 
your tin pretty little toes," he said, gallantly. And 
he added, as he took promptly the five dollars which 
Signor EfFerati most reluctantly held out to him: 
"It's th' ways o' th' counthry as your husband's 
not afther knowin' yet; but he'll larn 'em as he goes 
along, ma'am, don't you have no fear!" 

As Mr. O'Hallahan drove away, leaving Signor 
EfFerati standing amidst the boxed-up mandolins 
in a pose suggestive of a short and stout Marius 
amidst the ruins of a musical Carthage, the fire and 
fury of the artistic nature once more asserted itself. 
Signor Efferati drew a long breath, and as he shook 
his soft bunch of a fist after the retreating carriage 
he exclaimed: "Ah, Vittoria, why didst thou stay 
my avenging arm ? Why didst thou interfere to pre- 
vent me from wreaking upon that insolent brigand 
the full measure of my wrath ?" 

"Calm thyself, my Seppino," answered the Sig- 

64 




AUy VITTORIA, WHY DIDST THOU STAY MY AVENGING ARM?" 



THE EFFERATI FAMILY 

nora, soothingly. And, as she passed her arm with- 
in his and gently drew him away from the scene of 
his valorous encounter, she added: "Still within 
thy heart the fierce traditions of thy stormy race. 
Thy foe is crushed and vanished. Be no longer vio- 
lent and cruel!" 

And then Leon and Telesforo shouldered the 
trunks; Marie and Don Anastasio collected the 
portmanteaux and hand-bags; their several owners 
took each the case containing his or her musical in- 
strument — and then the EfFerati Family entered 
the hospitable doorway of the Casa Napoleon. 



II 

Fortunately for Mr. O'Hallahan, but unfortu- 
nately for the EfFerati Family, the actual head of 
the Casa Napoleon did not reach the seat of war 
until after the battle was over; and therefore came 
too late to interpose her powerful forces as an aux- 
iliary on the side of abstract justice. During the 
conflict Madame had been in her own chamber, 
dressing for the evening. She descended the stairs 
as the procession entered from the street, and be- 
came a very fountain of bubbling sympathetic in- 
dignation when the Signora explained to her the out- 
rageous wrong that the departed Mr. O'Hallahan 
had put upon them. 

In private Madame rated Don Anastasio roundly 
for permitting their guests to be imposed upon. It 
would give a bad name to the Casa Napoleon, she 

65 



AT THE CASA NAPOLEON 

said, if they suffered its frequenters thus to be de- 
spoiled by bandits at its very doors. Don Anastasio 
listened respectfully to his wife's protest, and then 
replied to it — accompanying his words with a gentle 
shrugging of his shoulders and a deprecating out- 
turning of the palms of his hands — by citing at 
length the first Law, under the second Title, of the 
Fifth Partida of Alonzo the Wise, King of Castile: 
which law exhibits the three several ways whereby 
one man may become responsible for the safe-keeping 
of another man's property. Arguing from this quo- 
tation, he pointed out that Signor EfFerati had not 
voluntarily given him the five dollars to hold in 
trust; nor had the charge of it been thrust upon him 
by the chance of natural disaster, such as flood, ship- 
wreck, or fire; nor had it been confided to his keep- 
ing by Signor Efi'erati and Mr. O'Hallahan jointly, 
pending its whole or partial payment to one or the 
other of the parties in interest under the direction 
of a properly constituted court. Therefore, con- 
cluded Don Anastasio, triumphantly, he was no 
more responsible in the premises than was Alonzo 
the Wise himself — ^who died some six hundred years 
before this particular application of his wisdom was 
made. 

Madame shocked Don Anastasio, and not a little 
pained him, by replying briskly that sentiments of 
this nature were all very well for a king in the dark 
ages, but she'd be bound that Alonzo the Wise 
would have sung a very different tune had he lived 
in New York in the nineteenth century, and made 
his living by keeping a hotel. 

66 



THE EFFERATI FAMILY 

Yet, Madame's championship of the interests of the 
EfFerati Family did not prevent her from making a 
tolerably close bargain with its business head as to the 
terms upon which it was to be boarded and lodged. 
She and the Signora argued the matter vigorously for 
half an hour before they came to a settlement. The 
terms finally agreed upon were six dollars and a half 
a day for the entire family; in return for which the 
family had two rooms on the top floor, its early coffee 
and bread, and its subsequent breakfast and dinner. 
Quite by accident, Madame omitted to mention the 
fact that the table wine was an extra. At the very 
least, that meant another dollar a day — of which 
eighty cents would be clear gain. 

In accordance with the friendly customs which 
obtained in this easy-going little hotel, everybody 
spoke to the new arrivals when they came down to 
dinner; and as they themselves were of a most kindly 
nature — barring only the Signor, when by some ill 
chance his warlike and tempestuous spirit was 
aroused — the whole company presently was talking 
together in a polyglot of Spanish, Italian, and French, 
with the cordial frankness of friends who had known 
each other for years. Under these affable conditions 
it was not long before the history, the purposes, the 
aspirations, of the Efferati Family became almost 
as well known to the dwellers in the Casa Napoleon 
as they were to the members of that family them- 
selves. 

In brief, they were patriots and musicians. The 
Signor and the Signora — though the Signora did 
not for a moment admit that her entry into life be- 
6 ^1 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

longed to so remote a period of antiquity — had been 
born in the very midst of that glorious struggle by 
which Italian unity was secured. Entering the world 
at this inspiriting epoch, they had come by their 
patriotic names almost as naturally as, subse- 
quently, they had come by their necessary teeth: 
and they had lived up to these names gallantly. 
Signor EfFerati was a Young Italian of the most pro- 
nounced sort — as he proved beyond a peradventure 
when he came on (between the first and second parts) 
wearing a sword and the red shirt to which his song 
related, and sang with a magnificent fervor, "La 
Camicia rossa" — to the glorious air and words of 
which Garibaldi's soldiers marched to victory. On 
these inspired occasions Signor EfFerati simply was 
superb ! 

According to this patriot singer's own statement, 
it was the great misfortune of his life that he had not 
been bred to the career of arms. The traditions of 
his race, as his name sufficiently indicated, he would 
say — the while giving a fierce upward curl to his 
mustachios — were traditions of daredevil adven- 
ture and dangerous deeds. But the enemies of Italy 
— fortunately for their own well-being — had the 
wisdom to hide their diminished heads when Signor 
EfFerati, who surely would have exterminated them, 
arrived at a fighting age. Therefore, his country 
having no need for his strong arm and resolute spirit, 
he had devoted himself to the career of music; and 
had strummed upon his mandolin, and to the ac- 
companiment of that instrument had sung for him- 
self, a brave way through the world. 

68 



THE EFFERATI FAMILY 

That the Signora assigned the date of her birth to 
a period "long after the war was over," was a state- 
ment, probably, of desired rather than actual fact; 
yet was it entirely excusable in the case of a most 
charming woman who possessed — and who knew 
admirably well how to use — a most killing pair of 
brown eyes. There was a comfortable plumpness, 
a generous redundancy of outline, about the Sig- 
nora's pleasing figure which would have led a critical 
observer— cool enough to remain critical under fire 
of her eyes — to infer that her age certainly was not 
less than five-and-thirty. However, her husband, 
w^ho was as devotedly attached to her as she was 
devotedly attached to him, had declared for some 
years past that she was just turned of twenty-five. 

It is certain that the eldest son of this most af- 
fectionate couple, Vittorio Emmanuele — named in 
honor of his mother, who had been named in honor 
of her King — ^was sixteen years old : which fact must 
be worked into the family arithmetic in any way that 
it will go. Umberto, the second son, was two years 
younger; and little Margherita was a miss of between 
eleven and twelve. There was an eye to business as 
well as to patriotism in the names of these younger 
children: "Umberto and Margherita, named in 
honor of the present King and Queen of Italy," made 
a capital point on the bills. That all three were born 
musical prodigies ought to go without saying. Each 
of the boys played upon the mandolin like a junior 
seraph, and little Margherita's touch upon that in- 
strument was less like that of a half-grown girl than 
like that of a half-grown angel. When they all 

69 



AT THE CASA NAPOLEON 

played together, under the leadership of the paternal 
mandolin, and with energy and depth of tone added 
by the maternal double-strung guitar, the result 
was music so entirely heavenly that it was as though 
their enraptured audiences were listening to a celes- 
tial orchestra — and even were beholding the same, 
seated in a graceful curve with the celestial right legs 
of its several members crossed over their celestial 
left knees. 

The entertainments given by this talented family 
were both vocal and instrumental. There were sev- 
eral choral numbers, with instrumental accompani- 
ment; there were duos by the Signor and the Sig- 
nora; the boys always evoked fits of laughter by 
their rollicking rendering of Neapolitan street ballads; 
and the First Part always ended with the "Hymn 
to the Virgin," sung by little Margherita in a man- 
ner so aflPecting that it rarely failed to draw from the 
feminine portion of the audience an ample tribute 
of tears. Between the parts, the Signor came out 
alone — ^wearing his red shirt and fairly blazing with 
the spirit of Italia irredenta — and gave "La Camicia 
rossa" in magnificent form. The Signora's corre- 
sponding triumph was the number next to the last in 
the Second Part: an especially vivacious Venetian 
love-song which she sang to the accompaniment of 
her double-strung guitar, and also to the accompani- 
ment of her prodigiously fine brown eyes. At the 
end of it, in the thick of the applause, the bouquet 
was handed up to her. I say the bouquet because it 
always was the same bouquet. They carried it with 
them in a box especially provided for it, and it was 

70 



THE EFFERATI FAMILY 

a work of art so admirable that — at least by gas- 
light — the flowers composing it seemed almost to be 
real. The presentation of the bouquet usually was a 
tremendous success because of a telling bit of comedy, 
of Signor EfFerati's devising, which accompanied it, 
and which rounded off the naughty little love-song 
with a delightful touch of realism. Just as the Sig- 
nora received the floral tribute from the hands of the 
usher, a three-cornered note always fell out from it 
and fluttered in the full view of the audience to the 
floor at her feet. Her own ample person interposing 
as a screen, the note could not be seen by her hus- 
band; yet would she give a most effective look of 
alarm over her shoulder as she picked it up and 
hastily thrust it into the liberally low-cut bosom of 
her gown. In the capitals of Europe, this act in- 
variably brought down the house. It w^as a surprise 
to the EfFerati Family that in America — at least in 
the Northern portion of America — it fell absolutely 
cold. The final number on the programme always 
was the national anthem of the country in which at 
the moment these talented Italians were winning 
fresh musical renown — and so extended had been 
their travels that, at one time or another, they had 
sung almost all the national anthems of the civilized 
world. 

As to the gown in which the Signora appeared be- 
fore a delighted public, it was — by gaslight — such a 
garment as even the Queen of Sheba in all her glory 
never wore: a gray silk skirt overlaid with lace and 
many flounces; a crimson body opening delectably 
over a most piquant lace corsage, and having a roll- 

71 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

ing lace collar and short lace sleeves which displayed 
to the best advantage her charming throat and most 
agreeably rounded arms. The Signor, at one period, 
had worn the dress of a troubadour — an effect in gar- 
net velvet that he had relinquished reluctantly, on 
the score of convenience, for conventional evening 
dress. This latter had the practical advantage of 
permitting him, when he came on in his red-shirt 
act, to replace his coat in a moment with the Gari- 
baldian garment and be ready instantly to appear; 
and the change back again to evening dress could be 
effected with a like celerity before his return to the 
stage in the Second Part. It is true that his trig 
black trousers and patent-leather shoes looked a 
little odd in conjunction with the red shirt and the 
sword; but the Signor comforted himself by recalling 
the historic fact that Garibaldi's soldiers were not in 
the least particular as to what sort of shoes and 
trousers they wore — being only too thankful to have 
any at all. The boys were clad in purple velvet 
jackets with broad white collars; purple velvet 
breeches with brave buckles at the knee; black silk 
stockings, and patent-leather pumps: in which gal- 
lant array — their hair, like their father's, being cut 
short and most carefully brushed forward upon their 
foreheads — they looked as fine as jays. With a view 
to helping along the angelic illusion when she sang 
the "Hymn to the Virgin," little Margherita was 
dressed always with the utmost theatrical simplicity 
in a cloud of white muslin. Being a gentle, pretty 
little creature, the effect was charming. Indeed, 
in their time, few combinations more handsomely 

72 



THE EFFERATI FAMILY 

arrayed than the Efferati Family were to be found 
upon the road. 

Ill 

In coming to New York, as the Signor frankly con- 
fided to his agreeable acquaintances that first even- 
ing at the Casa Napoleon, it was the intention of 
the EfFerati Family to crown a victorious progress 
through the Americas by a magnificent triumph in 
the chief city of the New World. 

They had marched conquering to the sound of 
their own music, he stated, from Buenos Ayres 
northward. Rio de Janeiro had lauded them, Cara- 
cas had cheered them, Guatemala had embraced 
them, the City of Mexico had gone wild over them; 
they had swept triumphantly through Guanajuato, 
Guadalajara, Zacatecas, and Chihuahua; when they 
crossed the Rio Grande they had been met with a 
whole-souled welcome at El Paso; they had won 
gold and glory in New Orleans. At this point Signor 
EfFerati stopped abruptly and on his face was a look 
of pain. In a moment he added, speaking in a con- 
strained voice: "And now we are in New York." 

"We gave concerts in St. Louis," said the Signora 
in a low tone. 

"It is a city of imbeciles!" said the Signor with a 
fierce contempt. 

"And in Chicago," continued the Signora. 

Obviously words were inadequate to express Signor 
EfFerati's opinion of Chicago. He glared in a very 
horrible manner and ground his teeth. 

7^ 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

"And in Philadelphia," concluded the Signora. 

Signer EfFerati groaned. 

"Courage, my own!" said the Signora tenderly. 
"They told us that Philadelphia was not like other 
American cities; that it was a city apart." 

"Heaven forbid that there should be another like 
it!" ejaculated Signor Efferati fervently. "Its 
people know not what Art is! Such dull coldness 
to the claims of music upon the soul is worse 
than the shameless neglect of St. Louis; it is al- 
most as bad as the coarse and brutal mirth of 
Chicago ! 

"Fancy, Madame," Signor EfFerati went on ex- 
citedly, addressing the hostess of the Casa Napo- 
leon, "those wretches, those animals of Chicago in- 
terrupted many times our beautiful overture by 
crying 'Peanuts!' and by asking us that we should 
shine their boots! When I came on to sing *La 
Camicia rossa' they jeered at my red shirt by crying 
*Fire!' and that I should * throw away the banjo and 
get a trumpet.' And what was most horrible of all, 
Madame, when our sainted little Margherita sang 
her *Hymn to the Virgin,' to the tender accompani- 
ment of all the instruments, one of the savages cried 
out: 'Stop them hand-organs, and let the monkey 
have a show!'" 

"Fortunately it was not until afterward," ex- 
plained the Signora, "that we knew the meaning of 
what was said — otherwise Giuseppe would have 
flown to where that savage was, and would have 
washed out the insult in blood." 

"Yes, in blood!" said Signor Efferati corrobora- 

74 



THE EFFERATI FAMILY 

tively, at the same time giving his mustachios a 
most ferocious upward curl. 

"He is so terrible a man," added the Signora, 
"when his anger is aroused!" 

"I cannot help it/' declared Signor EfFerati dep- 
recatingly. "It is my misfortune that I inherit the 
spirit of my race. We Efferati did not receive our 
name for nothing, back in the past — our fierceness 
has been known and dreaded from the earliest times." 

"As Don. Anastasio himself saw," said the Sig- 
nora, "it was only because of my strong entreaties 
that this very day Giuseppe refrained from slaying 
the odious driver of the carriage. Is it not so, Seiior .?" 

Being thus directly appealed to, Don Anastasio, 
after a moment of hesitation, replied, diplomatically, 
"He did not kill him." 

"It's a pity he didn't," Colonel Withersby struck 
in. "No jury on earth would convict a man for kill- 
ing a New York hack-driver. They'd acquit him 
without leaving the box, and then they'd give him a 
vote of thanks." 

"Has the Signor, your husband, killed a great 
many people?" 

It was Doctor Theophile who asked this question. 
His manner was most polite, but there was some- 
thing in his tone that grated a little harshly upon the 
Signora's ears. Don Anastasio, who was well ac- 
quainted with Doctor Theophile's sceptical and re- 
monstrant habit of mind, took occasion just then to 
stroke his gray mustache with his hand. It is un- 
deniable that beneath the cover of his hand Don 
Anastasio smiled. 

7S 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

After the delivery of Doctor Theophile^s question 
there was a brief but rather awkward pause. Then 
Signor EfFerati, equal to the occasion, dexterously 
relaxed the momentary strain by replying with dig- 
nity in his wife's place: "As the gentleman doubt- 
less knows, it is as impossible for a man of spirit on 
his way through the world to avoid having affairs 
of the sword as it is for him to avoid having affairs 
of the heart; but it is as discreditable to him to boast 
of the one as it is dishonorable of him to boast of the 
other. Has the gentleman lived long in New York, 
may I ask?" 

This handsome deliverance — while it certainly left 
the number of violent deaths for which Signor EfF- 
erati was responsible still in the realm of pure con- 
jecture — ^was so entirely a retort courteous that even 
the perverse Doctor Theophile could not press for 
accurate statistics of the slain. With a wave of his 
hand and a courtly bow, in keeping with the polite 
traditions of his French descent and West Indian 
training, he accepted the obvious dismissal of the 
delicate subject, and replied that he had lived in 
New York for many years. 

"Ah," said Signor EfFerati. "The gentleman must 
know the town Well. Perhaps he can make some 
suggestions of value as to the best manner in which 
musical artists — we ourselves, in short — can be in- 
troduced to the music-loving public of this great 
city. Is the gentleman himself an artist? and of the 
dramatic profession? — a tragedian, perhaps?" 

Doctor Theophile, slightly disconcerted by the 
tendency to mirth which these questions excited 

76 



THE EFFERATI FAMILY 

among the company, replied hastily and a little 
testily that he was not a member of the dramatic 
profession, but a physician; and added that he was 
quite incapable of giving advice of the nature which 
Signor EfFerati desired. 

'^Mais ouiy' interposed Madame. *^We have 
with us here two very talented members of the pro- 
fession, who doubtless can give you precisely the 
information which you require. Permit me to pre- 
sent to you, and to Madame, my friends Monsieur 
and Madame ^Arrison — who are known in the world 
of art as Monsieur Claude Dunbar and Mademoi- 
selle Violet Bream. They do not speak other than 
the English tongue, but I shall be most happy to 
translate." 

And then Madame, speaking in English, presented 
the EfFerati Family to Ned and Polly Harrison — 
who were sitting at one of the corner tables, and who 
had been unable to take part in the conversation 
because of their ignorance of the various languages 
in which it had been carried on. 
' Being the most obliging souls in the world, and 
being thoroughly imbued with the fraternal spirit of 
their cordial kind, Ned and Polly were more than 
willing, of course, to give the EfFerati Family a lift 
on the professional road. Moreover, they were in a 
position to give advice which had the merit of coming 
from people who knew what they were talking about 
— for Polly had not been a very long while gradu- 
ated from song-and-dance business into the lightest 
of light opera; and Ned (though he was not nearly 
so frank about it as Polly was about her novitiate) 

77 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

had served his time in a variety troupe before he 
earned his promotion to the minor walks of the legit- 
imate drama which he so inconspicuously adorned. 
Therefore these young people gave to the EfFerati 
Family — Madame obligingly acting as interpreter — 
much sound counsel; and the conference ended by 
their promising to put the Signor in relations with 
a trustworthy and capable theatrical agent the very 
next day. 

"We rest upon roses!" observed Signor EfFerati 
poetically, as he retired that night to the clean and 
comfortable bed provided for him in the Casa Na- 
poleon — leaving to the Signora, as was his custom, 
the thankless office of putting out the light and find- 
ing her way to bed in the dark. "These friends of 
ours will make our triumphant way plain to us," 
he continued. "They will conquer for us all diffi- 
culties. Here it will not be as it was in that vile St. 
Louis, and in that despicable Chicago, and in that 
Philadelphia of ice. Here it will be as it was in New 
Orleans the bountiful. This New York, Vittoria, it 
is a city of success!" 

That the Signora, under favorable conditions, 
would have responded sympathetically to her hus- 
band's outburst of prophetic enthusiasm does not 
admit of doubt. The conditions, unfortunately, 
were not favorable — for at the very moment that 
Signor Efferati reached his peroration she hit her 
shin a vicious crack against the rocking-chair in the 
dark. No one can take much interest in prophecy 
while suffering the severe pain that results from a 
sharp blow upon this most sensitive portion of the 

78 



THE EFFERATI FAMILY 

human anatomy; and before the pain had subsided 
sufficiently to enable her to take a sympathetic part 
in the enjoyment of the vision of victory which her 
husband had conjured up for their mutual encour- 
agement, the creator of the vision was sound asleep. 
In his dreams Signor EfFerati pursued the same line 
of agreeable fancy: money poured into the family 
treasur}^; Fame blew her trumpet vigorously; every 
member of the EfFerati Family wore a laurel crown ! 



IV 

On the ensuing morning, her shin no longer pain- 
ing her, the Signora rose to the situation and re- 
joiced with a good heart. Being of a more practical 
nature than her husband, she did not think much 
about the trumpet of Fame, nor about herself and 
the rest of the family crowned with laurel; but she 
did think, and with much satisfaction, that they 
were likely to open negotiations that day which 
would lead to a profitable engagement whereby would 
be made good the loss that had attended their recent 
run of bad luck. 

It was the reasonable desire of the Signora to ac- 
company the Signor to the office of the theatrical 
agent, and to assist in the framing of the contract 
that she hoped was to be drawn. Her faith in Signor 
Efferati as a musician and as a man of indomitable 
personal courage was unbounded; but she knew 
from experience that as a man of affairs he was not 
always a success. The Signor, however, who had the 

79 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

utmost confidence in his own business capacity, in- 
sisted that her advice in the premises was unneces- 
sary, and so went off without her in the company 
of the obhging Mr. Ned Harrison, who was to intro- 
duce, and of the obhging Don Anastasio, who was 
to serve as interpreter between, the high contracting 
powers. 

Under these circumstances it was not unnatural 
that anxious doubts should beset the soul of the 
Signora whilst her husband fared abroad; doubts 
so painful that she found practice upon the double- 
strung^guitar an impossibility, and found difficulty 
even in wording properly an appeal to the saints 
that the matter might come to a good end. 

At the end of a couple of hours her anxious doubts 
seemed to be resolved into anxious certainties by 
the return to the Casa Napoleon of Signor EfFerati 
in a state of towering rage. His short, crisp black 
hair fairly bristled, and his mustachios actually 
twitched with fury — by which outward and visible 
signs of the commotion that was within him the 
wife of his bosom perceived that the violent passions 
of his fiery race most terribly were aroused. 

"What is it, my heart? What fresh outrage have 
these miserable Americans sought to put upon thee?" 
she inquired, in tones of tenderest concern, and at 
the same time sought to draw her highly explosive 
consort to the soothing retirement of her affection- 
ate arms. 

For the moment, Signor EfFerati refused this of- 
fered consolation. Like another Ajax defying the 
lightning, he shook his imperfectly clenched fist to- 

80 



THE EFFERATI FAMILY 

ward high heaven — that is to say, the ceiling — and 
at the same time stamped in fury upon the cowering 
earth — that is to say, the floor. *'To think," he 
cried, "that the EfFerati Family should be thus in- 
sulted! To think that it should be asked of us — I 
say of US! — to produce our pearls of music among 
the swine of a cheap show! To think that thou, my 
soul, my blessing — who excellest in thy playing upon 
the double-strung guitar the most highly trained 
among the angels — shouldst have thy divine music 
placed on the sickening level of the Bearded Woman 
and the Tattooed Man ! To think of our beautiful 
children, the sweet pledges of our love and the in- 
heritors of our genius, ranked as attractions with 
the Living Skeleton and the Two-headed Calf! I 
speak not of myself, Vittoria," the Signor went on 
bitterly. "Doubtless my playing upon the mando- 
lin and my singing of *La Camicia rossa' give but a 
paltry pleasure to the swinish multitude as com- 
pared with that which is aff"orded them by beholding 
the Champion Fat Woman and the Man Ape. Yes 
(though, as thou knowest, some of the greatest of 
the earth have borne flattering testimony to the 
contrary), my playing and my voice are poor and 
unworthy — " 

"Cease, Seppino! It is blasphemy thus to speak 
of thy divine playing and of thy divine voice. Come 
hither and sit beside me, my heart, and tell me clearly 
of this cruel matter that has so torn thy soul." 

"It is strange," said the Signor presently, as he 
sat beside his wife and suff*ered her to press his head 
gently against her shoulder and to stroke soothingly 

8i 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

his crisp black hair — "it is strange to me, Vittoria, 
that I came away and left alive the base wretch who 
insulted me, and still more thee, by making me this 
infamous ofFer, that I did not, then and there, in- 
stantly quench the insult with his blood!" 

"Thou fierce and wilful one! How uncontrollable 
is thy raging fury! But tell me, what was his offer? 
Of the sort of place in which he desired that we should 
play, I understand; but how much did this odious 
man say that he would pay us for our playing?" 

"He had the hardihood to offer twenty-five dol- 
lars a night," answered Signor Efferati, grinding out 
the words between his teeth. 

"Twenty-five dollars — one hundred and twenty- 
five lire — a night? We have done worse than that, 
my soul; much worse. It is true, we also have done 
better. But, remember, it cannot always be with 
us as it was at New Orleans. We must earn money, 
heart of my heart — of late we have only lost it. 
What matters it where or how we make our account 
out of this country of savages ? None of our kindred 
ever will know if now and then we suffer some slight 
humiliation; and we ourselves shall forget all when 
we are safe and happy in the little home in Italy with 
our fortune made. Instead of desiring to slay the 
wretched creature who made thee this offer, why 
didst thou not accept it — at least until something 
better shall offer in turn?" 

"I have told thee that I did not slay him." 

"Yes. Well.?" 

"I did accept his offer. We begin on Monday 
night." 

82 



THE EFFERATI FAMILY 

And then, without a trace of his late furiousness, 
Signer EfFerati calmly went into all the details of 
the agreement under which the EfFerati Family was 
to appear at a dime museum in the Bowery; the 
engagement being for one week certainly, with the 
promise of an extension from week to week so long 
as the attraction should prove to be a paying success. 

In many respects Signor EfFerati was like a thun- 
der-cloud; and in no respect was this similarity 
more marked- than in the equable cheerfulness which 
possessed him the very moment that he had dis- 
charged the lightning of his rage. Being now safely 
delivered of his pent-up fury, he went on with en- 
thusiasm to dilate upon the advantages which ^he 
engagement held out to them. 

"It is an engagement for ages, thou perceivest, 
my angel," he said; "for it is to be continued until 
the public shall tire of us. For the public, even for 
this American public, to tire of us is impossible. If 
we desire that America shall be our home — here is 
our home made for us. We play on and on nightly 
at this liberal salary. We play through the months, 
through the years, through all our lives — and our 
children and our children's children play on after us. 
We cease to be a mere passing attraction; we be- 
come a permanent Institution of this great city; and 
the name of the EfFerati becomes indissolubly asso- 
ciated with the musical history of America. Our 
surroundings will change — bearded women will die 
and be forgotten, tattooed men and living skeletons 
will pass unheeded from the public gaze and will be 
lost in nameless graves, such motes in the sunbeam 
7 83 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

as champion fat women and two-headed calves and 
men apes will vanish unregretted into the abysms 
of time — but the Efferati Family will live on ! Com- 
ing generations of our race will continue to delight 
coming generations of Americans down to the re- 
motest ages; and our descendants, living always in 
a triumphal present, and always pressing forward 
confidently toward the ever-increasing triumphs of 
a magnificent future, will recall with an affectionate 
veneration the splendor of their glorious past. They 
will speak gratefully of us — of thee, Vittoria, and of 
me — as their illustrious progenitors; they will point 
to us proudly as the founders of their musical dynasty 
in the New World. And the Americans of those dis- 
tant ages also will pay grateful tribute to our memory. 
It is not too much to believe that they will declare 
that even as they owe to the immortal Genoese, our 
great compatriot, the discovery of their continent, 
so do they owe to us, the Efferati, its endowment 
with that most perfect form of orchestral music 
which is found in the combination of four mando- 
lins and a double-strung guitar. My only regret is 
that I did not introduce into the contract a clause 
by which, should we so desire, we would be free to 
terminate our engagement when our honors weary 
us and our wealth has swollen beyond the propor- 
tions of a miser's dream. But, in truth, I care not. 
Let us abandon the project of the little home in Italy, 
and frankly devote our lives to the m.usical regener- 
ation of this noble country that so frankly has of- 
fered to us incalculable fortune and enduring fame. 
Forgetting our plans for our own mere selfish enjoy- 

84 



THE EFFERATI FAMILY 

ment, let us consecrate ourselves and our offspring 
to the splendid purpose of perpetuating in this 
America our majestic Art! Embrace me, Vittoria, 
proud mother of a glorious race — and let us go in- 
stantly to breakfast. I am so hungry that I have a 
pam! 



It is a melancholy fact, but a fact of which Signor 
EfFerati was wont to lose sight in his periods of ar- 
tistic exaltation, that professional musicians who 
listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and 
who pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope; 
who expect that theatrical agents will perform the 
promises made in their behalf by their casual ac- 
quaintances, and that the deficiencies caused by an 
unsuccessful engagement in one city will be made 
good by a successful engagement in another, fre- 
quently are convinced of the illusory nature of these 
several acts and convictions without relinquishing 
the study of their own personal history in order to 
attend to that of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia. 

The particular and painful application of this gen- 
eral statement was brought home pointedly to Signor 
EfFerati at the end of the engagement of one week 
that was to test the drawing qualities of the EfFerati 
Family in New York. That week of trial was re- 
garded by the proprietor of the dime museum as 
demonstrating the fact that the EfFerati Family had 
not any drawing qualities at all. 

"Th' whole blank bihn' of 'em ain't worth as much 

85 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

as a third-class freak," he said, coarsely. "They 
just tinkle away at their little banjos that nobody 
more'n half hears, an' they just yawp away at their 
/talian songs that nobody knows nothin' about, an' 
nobody pays no more attention to 'em than if they 
was stuffed. Th' Armless Woman with her piano 
act with her toes ain't much, but she can give 'em 
points every time. She draws, th' Armless Wom- 
an does; an' that's what they don't. They're a 
bigger fraud than that blank Holy Land spectro- 
scope was, an' what they've got t' do is t' git!" The 
proprietor of the museum spoke feelingly. The 
failure of the spectroscopic views of the Holy Land 
was of recent occurrence, and the bitterness of it 
still rankled in his soul. 

Signor Efferati, thanks to his ignorance of English, 
was spared the pain of understanding this ribald 
arraignment of himself and his family and his art. 
But he did understand that the engagement was 
ended; that on its very threshold the triumphant 
career of the Efferati Family in New York was cut 
short. Moreover, he was oppressed by the painful 
conviction that the proprietor of the museum was 
but protecting his own interests; for the fact could 
not be disguised that no response had come from the 
Bowery representatives of the music-loving public 
of New York to the appeal made to it by the four 
mandolins and the double-strung guitar. 

"In this detestable land of swine, Vittoria," cried 
Signor Efferati in tones of mingled indignation and 
contempt, "what wouldst thou expect? It is a land 
of savage wild animals, who know nothing of the 

86 



THE EFFERATI FAMILY 

charms of artistic excellence, and whose ears are 
deaf to the melodious allurements of musical skill. 
This America, I say, is a vast pen of pigs. I shake 
my fist at it! I pour out upon it the full measure of 
my disdain! My project for founding here a splen- 
did line of musicians is abandoned ! Let these wretch- 
ed creatures make their own music — their own hid- 
eous parody of music — in their own hideous way! 
As for us, Vittoria, we will remain true to our patri- 
otic instincts; true to our plan for ending our days 
happily in our own beloved Italy — ^where music and 
all things gracious and beautiful have their home. 
I will not lay my avenging hand upon this detest- 
able country. Its miserable inhabitants may con- 
tinue to live. But let us shake instantly its con- 
taminating dust from ofF our feet and begone to our 
own dear land. Let us go, I say, at once!" 

As he spoke these words, Signor Efferati snatched 
the red shirt from where it was hanging over a chair, 
rolled it into a tight bundle, and thrust it into one of 
the open trunks. He was continuing his hasty pack- 
ing by folding his black trousers when the Signora 
laid her hand restrainingly upon his arm. 

"Thou raging one!" she said. "Calm for a mo- 
ment thy fury and think a little before thou decidest 
to abandon this land, leaving it crushed beneath 
the weight of thy hot hatred. There are parts of 
this America" — the Signora spoke with a slight 
hesitation — "which have not been good to us. I 
will not fan the flame of thy anger by naming the 
hateful cities which have rejected us. But remem- 
ber, I beg of thee," she went on in more assured 

87 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

tones, "the many cities which have welcomed us 
and which have poured out their treasure at our 
feet. Thou knowest how for years we have cher- 
ished together our plan for buying in our dear Italy 
the little home in which to spend happily the even- 
ing of our days. And thou knowest how slowly, how 
very slowly, the money came to us until in a good 
hour we crossed the seas to this rich land where 
money seems to sprout like grass — " 

"Did money sprout like grass in St. Louis the 
hideous, in Chicago the revolting, in that Philadel- 
phia of pitiless cold? Is it sprouting here?^' inter- 
jected Signor EfFerati, bitterly. 

"Peace, my heart, peace!" replied the Signora in 
a soothing voice. "Hearken to me but a moment 
longer. Thou knowest that more than half of all 
that we have paid upon the little farm has been paid 
since we came to this good America. Thou knowest 
that only four thousand lire — eight hundred of these 
American dollars — remains to be paid, and then it 
will be all our own. In Italy we may give our con- 
certs for a long, long time before we earn so great a 
sum. But here — if we can have again such fortune 
as attended us in Mexico and New Orleans — in half 
a year it will be ours. In two years of such fortune 
— and we well can afford two years, for we still are 
young — ^we will make ourselves as rich as people in 
a dream. We can buy an estate. It may happen 
that thou wilt be ennobled. Our children will make 
great marriages." 

"What wouldst thou have me do?" asked Signor 
Efferati irresolutely. "Is it that we return to those 

88 



THE EFFERATI FAMILY 

happy cities of the South ? To return thither would 
cost more than a prince's ransom — in this land of 
nabobs where there is no third class." 

"No," answered the Signora, with great firmness 
and with a gesture of exalted command, "I would 
not have thee return. I would have thee remain 
here to conquer! These excellent young friends of 
ours have not disguised from us the fact that in New 
York success is achieved with difficulty; but they 
have assured. us that when success comes it is over- 
whelming. When once New York is conquered, the 
whole country is at our feet. We go everywhere — 
even to those cities which I will not name — and 
everywhere we are victorious. Therefore do I tell 
thee to remain and conquer New York! Thy noble 
courage will suffice thee for this enterprise. Once 
let thy heart of iron and soul of flame be aroused 
in all their valorous strength, and triumph is as- 
sured!" 

There was this most fortunate quality of balance 
in the composition of the Efferati Family: when 
smiling Fortune beckoned onward to assured suc- 
cess, Signor Efferati was animated by a magnificent 
and irresistible enthusiasm which led him to hurl 
defiance at all the evil powers of Fate. When 
things were going the other way; when — as in the 
present instance — the evil powers of Fate had the 
Efferati Family, so to speak, fairly by the heels, 
it was the Signora who came to the front, and who 
stayed there until the emergency was passed and 
they were going along smoothly in deep water again. 

Signor Efferati was accustomed to this reasonable 

89 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

division of energy; and was accustomed also to ac- 
cept in good faith (but not to acknowledge) his wife's 
leadership through the strait and rugged portions 
of his professional career. Therefore, when she thus 
resolutely addressed him, his heart of iron and soul 
of flame responded to her appeal — as he promptly 
manifested in acts by unfolding his partially folded 
black trousers and by removing his red shirt from 
the trunk; and in words by declaring that he not only 
relinquished his bitter purpose of cursing the Amer- 
ican continent and thereafter instantly abandoning 
it to its withering fate, but that he was highly re- 
solved to wrest from the Americans an abounding 
measure of both fortune and fame. Warming with 
his own enthusiasm, he added that rather than fail 
in either of these particulars, he freely would pour 
out his heart's blood. 

"Thou great and noble soul!" cried the Signora, 
embracing him with a proud affection. "Thy 
strength is that of a tower of stone!" 

"Thou flatterest me, angel of my heart," answered 
Signor Efferati, deprecatingly. "Yet art thou safe, 
my little one, to rest upon me for support. Fear not, 
Vittoria! my manly strength shall uphold thy wom- 
anly weakness through this season of bitter trial!" 

VI 

During the ensuing three weeks a sombre cloud 
of misfortune hung over the Efferati Family, and 
beneath this dismal canopy its several members 
moved mournfully in an atmosphere of gloom. 

90 



THE EFFERATI FAMILY 

Under these trying conditions the staying-powers 
of the Signora as a leader of forlorn hopes were tol- 
erably well tested, and they responded handsomely 
to the test. Whatever may have been her private 
convictions, her open avowals were unfailing proph- 
ecies of the speedy coming of that sunshine of suc- 
cess which would dispel their darkling misfortunes, 
even as the real sunshine dispels the mists of morn. 
The Signor did not sustain himself during this en- 
counter with. adversity with quite such flying colors. 
Accepting his wife's likening of him to a tower of 
stone, and continuing that simile, he may be said 
to have wabbled on his foundations, and to have 
cracked in his upper stories, and to have bulged 
badly at his sides. It would not be going too far, 
indeed, to affirm that on two or three occasions he 
fairly tumbled down and remained — until she picked 
him up and put him together again — a shapeless 
mass of ruins at her feet. 

That the Signora herself at times broke under the 
strain of persistent misfortune is not to be denied; 
but she managed her temporary collapses in such 
a fashion that they were completely hidden within 
her own heart. When, at the end of a day of failure, 
she had strengthened Signor Efferati's defective 
masonry with cheerful words of buoyant prophecy 
as to what the next day would bring forth, and so 
had soothed him to refreshing sleep, she considered 
herself free to seek slumber on her own account 
through the damp and melancholy medium of tears; 
yet did she permit herself such solace of sorrow 
only in consideration of her self-made promise that 

91 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

in the morning she would be again, for her hus- 
band's benefit, all hopes and smiles. 

By day — having some distrust of the result should 
she leave Signor EfFerati's heart of iron and soul of 
flame to their own devices — she took the manage- 
ment of the campaign into her own hands, and per- 
sonally led the storming parties. With the Signor 
in her wake — and with a bilingual compatriot whom 
they retained as an interpreter — she attacked every 
theatrical agency in New York; and from these ex- 
tended her assaults directly to every place of amuse- 
ment in which there was the remotest chance that 
a musical combination would be taken on. But the 
upshot of this vigorous^ canvass of the city's pro- 
fessional possibilities was utterly disheartening. The 
answer of the managers was an unhesitating and 
unanimous No! — for the news had gone abroad in 
theatrical circles that in its Bowery engagement 
the EfFerati Family had scored a distinct failure; 
and in view of that discouraging fact not a manager 
was willing to touch these luckless exponents of the 
mandolin and the double-strung guitar even with 
a pair of tongs. 

"Fate is against us!" said Signor EfFerati, gloomily. 
"Resistance on Our part is useless; misery and mis- 
fortune have claimed us for their own. We will 
perish together, Vittoria! We will lie down beside 
our guitar and mandolins and die — and so wring 
from this inhospitable country the cold hospitality 
of a grave! See what we Italians do for America — 
and yet for us there is nothing in this ingrate land!" 

They were crossing Washington Square as Signor 

92 




SEE, IT IS FROM US THAT THIS NEW YORK RECEIVES 
ITS GLORIOUS gift!" 



THE EFFERATI FAMILY 

EfFerati thus bitterly delivered himself, and that to 
which he drew his wife's attention was the monu- 
ment to his great namesake, Garibaldi. Only that 
day had the statue been set in place upon its ped- 
estal. Workmen were erecting a scaffolding, pre- 
paratory to the ceremonies which were to attend 
the unveiling on the ensuing Monday. On the ped- 
estal was inscribed: Gli Italiani degli Stati Uniti 
d' America eressero. 

"See," continued Signor EfFerati, pointing to this 
inscription, "it is from us, from the Italians, that 
this New York receives its glorious gift! We give 
the statue of our great compatriot because nature 
has made us noble, and we go through life with both 
hands opened wide. And what do they do in return 
for our generosity, these close-fisted niggards of New 
York.? Truly it is a brave return that they make 
us! They shut their doors against us; they spurn 
us from their presence; they drive us forth into the 
wilderness to starve among wild beasts! Such is 
their gratitude! Let us hasten home to our break- 
fast, Vittoria — and then let us pack our few poor 
belongings, while even these yet remain to us, and 
then abandon instantly and for ever this land ac- 
cursed of Heaven and given over to miserly swine!" 
For once Signora EfFerati did not see her way clear 
to intervening between the American continent and 
its people and her husband's wrath. In fact, her 
own feeling toward America and the Americans 
now was such that she was inclined to permit Sig- 
nor EfFerati freely to hurl against the one and the 
other his blighting curse. To be sure, so far, New 

93 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

York had supported them, for they still were living 
on the cash proceeds of their week of failure in the 
Bowery. But the fact that New York quite plainly 
had intimated its indisposition to support them any 
longer was enough to prove that it was peopled, 
even as Signor Efferati had declared, by mean and 
sordid souls. Therefore the Signora kept silence as 
they walked onward to their hotel, and permitted 
her husband to comment with an energetic freedom 
upon the continent and the people that had played 
them false. The Italian is a language that abounds 
in epithets of censure, disparagement, contempt, and 
scorn. Signor EfFerati used them all! 

A good breakfast, however, has charms which 
tend to soothe the savage breast; and when this 
violent apostle of the mandolin had finished his 
really excellent breakfast he grew somewhat more 
calm. Yet his purpose to abandon America by the 
very first steamer sailing for an Italian port was not 
relinquished; nor was this purpose any longer op- 
posed by his wife. They were quite agreed, at last, 
that their business success and their self-respect 
alike demanded their dignified but expeditious re- 
tirement from the Western Hemisphere. 

Consultation with Don Anastasio revealed the 
fact that the Iniziativa, of the Florio line, would sail 
on the ensuing Saturday for Naples; whereupon, 
taking with them their bilingual compatriot as a 
guide, they went straightway to the Florio office 
and engaged their passage. In order to secure their 
berths it was necessary, the clerk informed them, 
that they should pay down ten per cent, of their 

94 



THE EFFERATI FAMILY 

passage- money; which payment, he added warn- 
ingly, would be forfeited should they fail to be on 
board when the vessel sailed. Upon hearing this 
absurd warning the Signora smiled so generously 
that every one of her fine white teeth plainly was to 
be seen. That they should fail to be on board was 
the very height of the ridiculously impossible! And 
then her charming brown eyes filled with tears as 
the tender thought exalted her that in so short a 
time she would see her own dear Italy again. 

"My Seppino, I am so full of gladness that I must 
kiss thee," she cried. "The thought of the dear 
home almost breaks my heart for joy!" 

Whereupon she did kiss Signor Efferati most vig- 
orously — ^while the clerk and the bilingual com- 
patriot looked on with envy, and earnestly wished 
that her expansive happiness might become suffi- 
ciently comprehensive to include them in the 
kissing. 

"Heart of my heart," said the Signora when her 
affectionate demonstration was well ended, "I am 
frantic as I think that we truly are going. It seems 
impossible for me to wait through these limitless 
long two days which must pass before the ship will 
carry us away!" 

And yet — such is the mutability of things earthly 
— the earnest-money which they had paid was for- 
feited; the Iniziativa sailed without them; and the 
Signora, willingly and gladly, waited through not 
only two days, but through two entire years for the 
ship which at last did carry her back to her loved 
Italian home. 

95 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 



VII 

The radical change above indicated in the pro- 
gramme of the Efferati Family began to be made the 
very moment that they returned to the Casa Na- 
poleon. In the little parlor of that modest hotel 
they found waiting for them a personage whose phys- 
ical proportions were so considerable, and whose 
port was so largely dignified, that he gave the im- 
pression of much more than filling the room. The 
Signora, whose eyes were as quick as they were irre- 
sistible, instantly recognized in this magnificent 
being the proprietor of a great variety theatre; and 
as she recognized him her heart gave a bound. 

Don Anastasio was in waiting to serve as inter- 
preter. The manager was a man of few words, and 
he came to the point with the utmost directness: 
he wished to engage the Efferati Family to appear at 
his theatre during the ensuing week, opening on 
Monday evening, June 4th — the evening of the day 
on which the Garibaldi statue would be unveiled. 
He desired that the programme should be intensely 
ItaHan, and largely made up of Italian patriotic 
songs. He would pay twenty-five dollars a night 
— the rate which the Signora had suggested would 
be satisfactory when she had called upon him in his 
office a fortnight before. 

"Tell him that we accept!" cried Signor EjfFerati 
almost before Don Anastasio had ceased speaking. 

"Stop!" cried the Signora, raising a warning hand. 
"Tell him that we have this moment returned from 

96 



THE EFFERATI FAMILY 

engaging our passage by the steamer which leaves on 
Saturday, and that we refuse." 

Between these conflicting statements of intention 
Don Anastasio hesitated. 

"It is that he must pay us more — but do not your- 
self yet tell him that," explained the Signora. 

And then Don Anastasio, perceiving the subtle 
wisdom of the Signora's method, went ahead. 

It is unnecessary to trace through all its stages 
the negotiation which followed between Signora 
EflFerati on the one hand (Signor EfFerati was out of 
the running from the start) and the manager on the 
other. The manager had determined to have an 
attraction during the week of Italian festival which 
would rope in, as he brusquely expressed it, the pea- 
nut and banana crowd; and the Signora, perceiving 
this determination, was for her part determined that 
she would make her account out of it. A wom- 
an's will, of course, is far stronger than the will of 
a mere manager; and the Signora really had what 
seemed to be a very plausible argument in support 
of her demand for high pay in the forfeited ten per 
cent, of the passage-money — for she neglected to 
state that the forfeit was based on steerage rates, 
and that (little Margherita and Umberto having 
been lumped in one fare) the total amount to be 
surrendered was precisely twelve dollars. So the 
upshot of the matter was that the manager raised 
his ofFer gradually until he got it up to fifty dollars 
a night; and when the Signora found that he cer- 
tainly would not go any higher, and was beginning 
to show signs of throwing over the whole business in 

97 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

disgust, she accepted with a very well-acted show 
of reluctance these truly magnificent terms. 

As to the wonderful success of the engagement 
that followed — extended to four weeks, repeated 
in the two following seasons, and assuring an extra- 
ordinarily brilliant tour through the principal cities 
of the United States — it all is a matter of such recent 
occurrence that no more than the merest mention 
of it is necessary here. It is sufficient to say that a 
more splendid tribute to the deserved merits of a 
musical combination is not recorded in the annals 
of the variety stage. 

Without prejudice to the substantial elements of 
success residing in the EfFerati Family, however, 
the fact may be admitted that intelligent adver- 
tising had much to do with the brilliant triumph 
of the opening night; which triumph cleared the 
way for all the later victories. 

On the day of the Italian festival — from Mul- 
berry Bend to Macdougal Street, and everywhere 
along the line of the parade — there was a lavish 
scattering of red, white, and green handbills an- 
nouncing the appearance that evening of the EfFerati 
Family at the Mammoth Metropolitan Variety 
Theatre, and dilating upon the patriotic nature of 
the entertainment which this eminent Italian musical 
combination there would give. Beneath these stir- 
ring announcements, Washington Square, the centre 
of the demonstration in honor of Garibaldi and 
Italian unity, may be said to have disappeared. But 
there was a better touch still. At the end of the 
parade came an omnibus containing a bass-drum 

98 



THE EFFERATI FAMILY 

and a number of violent brass instruments which 
together poured forth ItaHan patriotic airs tem- 
pestuously. Italian flags waved above the omnibus, 
and on its sides was blazoned in red and green letters 
on a white muslin ground this inspiring legend: 

Giuseppe Garibaldi, the Patriot, is Dead! 
Giuseppe Garibaldi EfFerati, the Musician, still Lives! 
Hear the EfFerati Family to-night, and every night this week, 
at the Mammoth Metropolitan Variety Theatre in Patriotic 
Italian Songs. ' 

This presentment was made in the Italian lan- 
guage. From the windows of the omnibus were dis- 
tributed red, white, and green handbills, also in the 
Italian language, giving the patriotic programme. 
At the bottom of the bills was a blaze of patriotic 
Italian sentiment that fairly made things hum! 



VIII 

By half after eight o'clock that evening the sign 
"Standing-room only" was displayed above the 
box-office window of the Mammoth Metropolitan 
Variety Theatre; and such a jam of Italian patriots 
as there was inside of that building never had been 
gathered into one single American theatre before! 

The patriots simply took the performance into 
their own hands and ran it to suit themselves. The 
Busterby Sisters got as far as one verse in their fam- 
ous character song, " Rollicking Betty and Bouncing 
Jane" — and then fled behind the scenes from the 
8 99 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

storm of shouting with which their musical utter- 
ances intentionally were drowned. In like manner, 
Ham Spartacus and Ikey Wild, song-and-dance men, 
and Mr. Harkwell Hyatt, the Protean Imperson- 
ator, summarily were disposed of. Ching-Po, the 
Chinese Champion Contortionist, and Murrell and 
Skeat, the Champion Roller - Skaters, not yielding 
to vocal persuasion, were driven off the stage under 
fire of vplleys of banana-peel. When the manager 
himself tried to quiet things down by coming on with 
his famous sentimental song, "Mamie's Eyes are 
Wet with Tears," he was received not with the ap- 
plause usually accorded to this great vocal effort, 
but with howls and yells. And all the while the 
patriots shouted: "The Efferati!" "Bring the Ef- 
ferati!" — and cheered for Garibaldi, and Italian 
unity, and red shirts, and Italy redeemed! 

Therefore, far ahead of their place in the pro- 
gramme, the Efferati Family came on — and the only 
wonder is, so tremendous was the roar of welcome 
with which they were greeted, that the roof did not 
at the same moment go off. Nothing like their re- 
ception, nothing like the way in which they carried 
the house with them, is chronicled in the history of 
variety performances in New York. The concerted 
pieces were cheered with a rapturous enthusiasm, 
and the soloists were recalled again and again. For 
the first time since leaving New Orleans the Sig- 
nora*s naughty little Venetian love-song was fully 
appreciated; and when the bouquet was handed 
up to her, and the note tumbled out of it, and she 
gave the frightened glance toward her husband, the 

ICO 



THE EFFERATI FAMILY 

house came down in a tumult of applause. When 
the boys sang their rollicking Neapolitan street bal- 
lads, the patriots simply screamed with laughter — 
and came into the choruses with a regular whirl 
and roar. And when little Margherita sang her 
"Hymn to the Virgin," all the female patriots shed 
tears freely; and there was such a general blowing 
of large Italian noses by the time that little Mar- 
gherita got along to the last verse that her singing 
scarcely could be heard at all. 

As to the tempest which broke forth when Signor 
EfFerati, with that brilliant garment upon his back, 
came on and sang "La Camicia rossa," words fail 
even vaguely to describe it! Eight times was Signor 
EfFerati compelled to repeat "La Camicia rossa"; 
and he probably would have been kept repeating it 
to this very moment had not the happy thought 
occurred to him, on the occasion of his ninth recall, 
to slide off into the "Star-spangled Banner" — 
which, being received with a very handsome enthu- 
siasm, tended to let the patriots down gently from 
the heights of patriotism whereto they had been ex- 
alted by their own thunderous backing of Signor 
EfFerati in the chorus and by their interpellated 
yells and shouts in regard to Italy redeemed! 

It was one o'clock in the morning when at last the 
patriots consented to go away; and they went then 
only in response to an urgent appeal to them to go 
— made by Signor EfFerati at the express request 
of the manager — coupled with a gradual turning 
out of the gas. As the last of them vanished, the 
Signor and Signora, by a common impulse, precipi- 

lOI 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

tated themselves into each other's arms and wept 
freely upon each other's shoulders tears of the purest 
joy. Not only had they achieved a magnificent 
triumph: by this triumph, as their prophetic souls 
correctly informed them, their musical conquest of 
America was assured! 



IX 

Two years later — in which period the prophecy 
of that happy moment had been abundantly ful- 
filled — the members of the EfFerati Family, bearing 
their sheaves with them, stood upon the deck of an 
Italian steamer and watched the Jersey Highlands 
sink away slowly into the bosom of the west. With 
a magnificent gesture toward the retreating conti- 
nent, and with a noble fervor, Signor EfFerati spoke: 

"It has won my heart, Vittoria, this America! It 
is superb!" He paused for a moment, and then in 
exalted tones continued: "In my anger, in the wild 
turmoil of that ungoverned passion which is the 
heritage of my fierce race, I once crushed this meri- 
torious country beneath the ponderous burden of 
my curse. Behold! That curse now is lifted! Amer- 
ica shall continue to prosper! / desire that it shall 
be blessed!" 



THE EPISODE OF THE MARQUES 
DE VALDEFLORES 




NTONIO HILARION DOMINGUEZ 
MEDRANO Y CORELLA, Marques 
de Valdeflores. When this brilliant 
name, with its pendent rubrica, was 
written by the nobleman to whom it 
pertained upon the register of the 
Casa Napoleon there ran through that establishment 
a thrill which may be said to have shaken it, figura- 
tively speaking, from stem to stern. 

As a rule, the frequenters of the Casa Napoleon 
were not noblemen. The exceptions to this rule 
were sporadic French counts, whose costly patron- 
age by no means was to be desired. Thanks to Ma- 
dame's worldly wisdom — sharpened to a very fine 
edge by five-and-twenty years of hotel-keeping — 
these self-constituted members of the French no- 
bility rarely got ahead of her. She "zized 'em up," 
as she expressed it, promptly; and as promptly they 
received their deserts: that is to say, they were 

103 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

requested to pay in advance or to move on. Then 
they moved on. 

But a nobleman from Old Spain, a genuine noble- 
man, and so exalted a personage as a Marques, was 
quite another thing. This was a splendor the like 
of which was unknown in all the years during which 
the Casa Napoleon had run its somewhat checkered 
but, on the whole, successful career. Madame, 
though an Imperialist rather than a Legitimist^ in 
her political creed, had a soulful respect for a title 
— ^which respect she manifested on this occasion by 
putting the silk coverlet on the bed in the best apart- 
ment, and by hurriedly removing the brown holland 
slips from the red plush sofa and from the two red 
plush arm-chairs. Don Anastasio — whose royalist 
tendencies had led him into a revolution in Mexico 
that had ended in not leading him, but in most vio- 
lently projecting him, out of it — rejoiced in the honor 
attendant upon entertaining so distinguished a rep- 
resentative of the principles for which, he was ac- 
customed to declare, he had suffered martyrdom. 
That he might lift himself to the high plane of the 
situation, he lighted one of the choicest of his re- 
served stock of smuggled cigars, and smoked it to 
the health of the King of Spain. Telesforo, the 
Cuban negro who waited in the dining-room upon 
the Spanish-speaking patrons of the house, retired 
hurriedly to his den in the basement and put on his 
clean shirt: which was not due, in the natural order 
of things, until the ensuing Sunday. Even Leon — 
the one-eyed French waiter; a pronounced Red, 
who openly boasted that he had lost his eye while 

104 




WHEN THIS BRILLIANT NAME WAS WRITTEN UPON THE REGISTER, 
THERE RAN THROUGH THAT ESTABLISHMENT A THRILL 



THE MARQUES DE VALDEFLORES 

fighting in the Commune behind a barricade — so 
far yielded to the spirit of the hour as to put on the 
clean paper collar which (keeping it in the rarely 
used large soup-tureen) he held in reserve for occa- 
sions of especial festivity. Marie, the trig chamber- 
maid, stuck a bow of cherry-colored ribbon in her 
black hair. No more was required of her. Without 
any extra adornment, Marie at all times was as fresh 
and as blooming as the rose. 

As it was with the proprietors and the retainers 
of the Casa Napoleon, so was it also with the habi- 
tues of that rather eccentric but most comfortable 
establishment. Colonel Withersby, who had not 
been wholly successful in his latest venture in tram- 
way promotion in Nicaragua — ^who had been com- 
pelled, in fact, to leave Nicaragua with such incon- 
siderate celerity that his exodus might with propriety 
be termed a flight — ^was cheered by the hope that 
Heaven had thrown in his way an opportunity to 
promote a tramway in some city (any city, he was 
not particular) in Spain. Monsieur Duvent, the 
dealer in a very respectable French gaming-estab- 
lishment in South Fifth Avenue, stroked thought- 
fully his respectable gray mustache and made a few 
trifling mental calculations in regard to the relative 
values of current Spanish and American coins. Mrs. 
Myrtle Vane, who was connected with the press, 
perceived at least a society item in the situation; 
possibly, should the Marques prove to be in any way 
a scandalous personage, a half-column article for 
the Sunday edition. Mrs. Mortimer — ^who, presum- 
ably, was a person of substance; for she occupied 

105 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

a handsome apartment on the first floor, yet she 
toiled not, neither did she spin — Hstened to Marie's 
account of the arrival of the Marques with an ex- 
pression of much interest. Thereafter she descended 
to dinner clad in raiment of price that far outshone 
in splendor the modest beauty of the lilies of the 
field — a species of vegetation with which, in point 
of fact, Mrs. Mortimer had but little in com- 
mon. 

Dr. Theophile alone refused to accept the Marques 
at his face value. "Pooh!" said Dr. Theophile, 
rudely, when Don Anastasio called him into the office 
that evening and showed him the magnificent name 
upon the register. " Pooh ! He is not a real Marques. 
That is moonshine. A nobleman of that calibre, 
Don Anastasio, does not come to the Casa Napoleon. 
Now and then, I grant you, you have here a rich 
planter from the islands or from the Spanish Main; 
and now and then a revolutionist who has been 
lucky enough — as you were — to get away with some 
of the revolutionary swag. But a genuine Marques, 
and from Old Spain, and rich? Oh no, Don Ana- 
stasio; that is only a dream! If he is a Marques, he 
certainly is without money; if he has money, he 
certainly is not a Marques — and the chances are 
that he has neither title nor cash. I saw something 
in the Epoca last week about a monte dealer who had 
to leave Barcelona in a hurry. No doubt your Mar- 
ques is that very man." 

However, Dr. Theophile was a natural-born re- 
monstrant. It was he who assailed Don Anastasio's 
claim to martyrdom in the roj^alist cause. The 

1 06 



THE MARQUES DE VALDEFLORES 

Doctor's contention was that Don Anastasio would 
have Hved a most miserable life, ending in an early 
and uncomfortable death, had not good fortune 
wafted him hurriedly out of Mexico and safely de- 
posited him in New York — ^where his days were long 
in the land, and very pleasant to him in the com- 
fortable haven in the Casa Napoleon that he had 
secured by his judicious marriage with Madame. 
Don Anastasio, who could afford to be heroic in the 
circumstances, denied Dr. Theophile's points abso- 
lutely, and clung to the belief in his martyrdom with 
an affectionate fervor — that did not in the least 
interfere, however, with his contentedly wearing 
shabby raiment and soiled linen and faring sump- 
tuously every day. Indeed, the excellent food that 
Madame gave him to eat, and the sound Bordeaux 
that she gave him to drink, would have gone a long 
way toward squaring accounts with a martyr whose 
martyrdom had been of a much more vigorous 
sort. 

After this denial of the validity of the Marques 
there was something of a coolness between Dr. 
Theophile and Don Anastasio; that endured until 
too much of Madame's rich food, and too much of 
that especial old Bordeaux, brought on one of Don 
Anastasio's bilious attacks, and so compelled him 
to resort to Dr. Theophile for physicking. Madame, 
who was short and round, and of a most quick and 
resolute temperament, did not suffer her resentment 
of the aspersions upon the genuineness of the Mar- 
ques to take the form of a mere coolness; it took 
the form of a very positive warmth. In her native 

107 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

clipped and softened French of Toulouse, she rated 
Dr. Theophile most roundly for venturing to call in 
question the honor of the nobleman within her 
gates — ^who, in a most nobleman-like manner, was 
running up a bill at the rate of from five to seven 
dollars a day. To this rating Dr. Theophile, in his 
much more clipped and still softer French of Guade- 
loupe, replied temperately that he would not then 
discuss the matter farther; but that he would have 
much pleasure in resuming it at a later period, when 
time in its fulness should have tested their con- 
flicting opinions in the crucible of practical results. 
He was wise in his generation, was this Dr. Theo- 
phile. His warrings were not with womenkind. 
With a man, he said, he was ready at all times to do 
battle with tongue or pistol or sword. But with a 
woman — no! A woman, he declared, was an incon- 
clusive animal. You might grind her between irre- 
futable arguments until you had reduced her to 
figurative fragments — and at the end of this some- 
what shocking process she simply would reiterate 
her original proposition with a calmly superior 
smile. Yet the women liked Dr. Theophile. There 
was current an old-time rumor that the cause of his 
leaving Guadeloupe was a dismal blight that had 
fallen upon his heart. A man whose past has in it 
a bit of sad romance like that is an object of tender 
solicitude to every right-natured woman; and he 
easily finds forgiveness on the part of such gentle 
judges for saying evil things about the sex that has 
done him so cruel a wrong. 

io8 



THE MARQUES DE VALDEFLORES 



II 

Meanwhile, the Marques de Valdeflores — bliss- 
fully ignorant of the doubts cast by Dr. Theophile 
upon his wealth and his patent of nobility, and igno- 
rant also of the various amiable designs formed by the 
resident population of the Casa Napoleon for assist- 
ing in the distribution of that wealth and for render- 
ing that nobility commercially valuable — continued 
in apparent contentment to occupy Madame's best 
apartment, to eat largely of the admirable food which 
she caused daily to be prepared for him, and to 
drink most liberally of her excellent wines. 

He was a very affable personage, was the Marques. 
"You might think that he wasn't a nobleman at all!" 
was Madame's admiring comment when telling of 
the frank and entirely unaffected way in which he 
had borrowed a dollar of Telesforo, the Cuban negro, 
to pay his cab fare. 

"You might know that he was not," was the cyn- 
ical comment of Dr. Theophile, to whom this gra- 
cious fact was told. 

Fortunately for the credit for hospitality of the 
Casa Napoleon, Dr. Theophile was the only one of 
the several dwellers in or frequenters of that estab- 
lishment who manifested the least disposition toward 
standing the Marques off. The others, to do them 
justice, more than atoned for Dr. Theophile's cold- 
ness by their effusive friendliness. With a frank 
cordiality charming to contemplate they severally 
and collectively did their very best to make him feel 

109 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

that, so far from being a stranger in a strange land, 
he was very much at home among genuine friends. 
As tending still farther to emphasize this interna- 
tional comity, it was even more delightful to observe 
the gracious friendliness with which these friendly 
advances were met and reciprocated. Having lived 
long enough in the world — he was a personable man, 
in the prime of his mature manhood — to know how 
rarely the perfect flower of friendship blooms, and 
possessing, moreover, the open-hearted tempera- 
ment of the South, it was only natural, though on 
that account none the less pleasing, that the Mar- 
ques should do his part to show his grateful appre- 
ciation of the hospitable kindness that was showered 
upon him. That he did his part was admitted by 
everybody but the remonstrant Dr. Theophile, who 
declared morosely that he overdid it. 

Mrs. Myrtle Vane, who sat beside him at the 
ordinary, succeeded in getting a good column article 
out of him on the very first evening of their acquaint- 
ance. The Marques told her some very racy stories 
about Spanish court life; and she worked them up 
— her knowledge of Spanish, a language universally 
current in the Casa Napoleon, enabling her to throw 
in a word here and there that gave them local color 
— in a fashion that made them still racier. As special 
correspondence, under a Madrid date, they were a 
decided hit in the Sunday edition. The editor vol- 
untarily gave her six dollars and a half the thousand 
words, and told her to go ahead and get some more. 
It was as good stuff as he ever had come across, he 
said. It certainly was admirably scandalous. Mrs. 

no 



THE MARQUES DE VALDEFLORES 

Vane perceived that she had opened a gold mine — 
for the story-telHng powers of the Marques appeared 
to be inexhaustible — and she worked it with a will. 
Feeling under a real obligation to the nobleman who 
so considerably was increasing her weekly income 
— she was a kind-hearted soul, not nearly so sophis- 
ticated as her very highly spiced illiterary produc- 
tions would have led one to suppose — she was glad 
to have an opportunity to show her appreciation of 
his kindness by inviting him to accompany her, on 
a press order, to an evening at the play. In the 
spirit in which it was offered, the Marques accepted 
this polite invitation. It struck him that there was 
something slightly pathetic about it. After the per- 
formance he treated Mrs. Vane — at a certain res- 
taurant well known for its shady reputation and for 
the brilliant achievements of its chef — to the very 
best supper that she had eaten in the whole course 
of her life. 

**He's a perfect high-toned gentleman," Mrs. 
Vane declared when recounting to Mrs. Mortimer 
rapturously — for little suppers came rarely in her 
life — this extraordinary and delightful experience. 
**He ordered all the highest-priced things on the bill 
of fare, and he set up the wine as if it was water; 
and he never offered to do more than just nicely 
squeeze my hand. I don't care what spiteful things 
Dr. Theophile says about him; after that I know 
that he's a perfect high-toned gentleman all the way 
through !" 

Inasmuch as Mrs. Mortimer, according to the re- 
peated assertion of Colonel Withersby, was a perfect 

III 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

high-toned lady herself, it is reasonable to suppose 
that she found pleasure in listening to this hand- 
some eulogy; and it is creditable to her generous 
impulses to suppose, also, that when, a few days 
later, she invited the Marques to a little supper 
in her own apartment, she was actuated by an 
amiable desire to repay in kind his kindness to her 
friend. 

Mrs. Mortimer was a delightful hostess, and her 
little suppers were renowned. To be sure, those 
who partook of them were apt to find that in the 
long-run they came rather high; but this trifling 
drawback upon a pure enjoyment of her hospitality 
was immaterial, inasmuch as, with a characteristic 
thoughtfulness, she uniformly selected her guests 
from that moneyed class which is superior in 
matters of amusement to considerations of ex- 
pense. 

On this particular occasion, it is needless to say 
that the Marques enjoyed his supper with Mrs. 
Mortimer. That Mrs. Mortimer enjoyed her sup- 
per with the Marques is a matter less absolutely 
assured. When he bade her good -night, bowing 
over her hand very gracefully, and with a gallant 
and high-bred courtesy kissing the tips of her white 
fingers, it is undeniable that he left her in a de- 
cidedly bewildered state of mind. All that Mrs. 
Vane had told of his dignified reserve she perceived 
was true. Her acquaintance with the higher nobility 
was extremely limited. If this were a fair specimen 
of that class she was fain to admit that its members 
were anything but easy to understand. Her one 

112 



THE MARQUES DE VALDEFLORES 

coherent concept in the premises was the unpleas- 
ant conviction that her Httle supper had not been 
an unquaKfied success. 

Nor did Monsieur Duvent, as the result of his 
lavish expenditure of friendship upon the Marques, 
receive any very adequate return. Having travelled 
a great deal, professionally, in Spain, he began his 
friendly advances by intelligent encomiums of that 
country. The Marques met his complimentary 
comments by the polite declaration that praise of 
his native land always was dear to him, but that it 
was doubly dear when bestowed with accurate dis- 
crimination by one who obviously knew it well; 
after which he made several exceedingly handsome 
speeches to Monsieur Duvent in regard to France. 
Their talk running lightly upon the more superficial 
characteristics of their respective countries, there 
was nothing forced in Monsieur Duvent's remark 
that he had been much struck — he did not add that 
his opportunities for being struck in this fashion 
had been decidedly exceptional — by observing the 
passionate and universal devotion of the Spanish 
race to gaming. In reply, the Marques courte- 
ously denied that the taste for gaming was uni- 
versal among his countrymen, but at the same time 
admitted frankly that it was very general; he even 
added, smilingly, that he shared in it himself. To 
permit one's self to be carried away by this passion, 
he observed with an admirable morality, was a most 
serious mistake; but within due bounds, he con- 
tinued, with a morality less severe, he knew of no 
amusement more interesting than judiciously con- 

113 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

ducted games of mingled chance and skill played for 
heavy yet not excessive stakes. 

Naturally, this discourse was very exactly to 
Monsieur Duvent's mind; and still more to his mind 
was the prompt acceptance by the Marques of the 
obliging ofFer to afford him an opportunity for grati- 
fying his taste for gaming in New York. As for the 
moral reflections that had accompanied the avowal 
by the Marques of his amiable weakness. Monsieur 
Duvent attached but little importance to them. 
In the course of his very extensive experience in 
these matters he frequently had heard expressed 
sentiments of this temperate sort; and as frequently 
had seen them scattered, in time of trial, like smoke 
before the wind. 

What very much surprised Monsieur Duvent, 
therefore — ^when, in due course, the Marques was 
introduced into the quiet and intensely respectable 
gaming establishment in South Fifth Avenue — was 
to observe that the temperateness of his new friend 
in deeds was precisely in keeping with his temper- 
ateness in words. The Marques played with a hand- 
some liberality, but also with a most phenomenal 
coolness. He followed his luck boldly yet prudently; 
he dropped his bad luck instantly; and his experi- 
enced wisdom was manifested by the obvious fact 
that he adhered to no "system," and recognized in 
the game no principle save that of the purest chance. 
At the end of an hour or so, when he nodded pleas- 
antly to Monsieur Duvent and withdrew, the bank 
was much the worse for his visit. Monsieur Duvent, 
whose income was largely in the nature of commis- 

114 



THE MARQUES DE VALDEFLORES 

sions, was decidedly dissatisfied. In this case the 
commission had gone the wrong way. The un- 
pleasant fact must be added that in the course of 
the subsequent visits paid by the Marques to that 
quiet banking establishment — fortunately he did 
not come often— his aggravating good fortune re- 
mained practically unchanged. Being only human, 
Monsieur Duvent suffered his friendship for the 
Spanish nobleman appreciably to cool. 



Ill 

Colonel Withersby's acquaintance with the Mar- 
ques opened under conditions so auspicious as to 
inspire in the breast of that eminent promoter 
the most sanguine hopes. At that particular junc- 
ture the Colonel, as he himself expressed it, was "in 
a blanked bad hole." He had made the fatal mis- 
take, in the hope of larger winnings, of standing by 
the Nicaragua tramway enterprise until it was too 
late for him to get out before the smash. As the 
result of his unwise greed he had lost not what he 
had put into the tramway company, for he had not 
put anything into it, but what he had expected to 
take out of it. Farther, and this was where the pinch 
came, his reputation as a promoter had been most 
seriously injured. Owing to circumstances over 
which he had had entire control, the Colonel's repu- 
tation — either as a promoter or as anything else — 
was of a sort that no longer could be trifled with. 
There was very little of it left, and that little was 

9 IIS 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

bad. But, until this unlucky twist in Nicaragua, 
his shrewdness in invariably getting out before the 
smash, and his handsome conduct in uniformly giv- 
ing the straight tip to his fellow-occupants of the 
ground floor, always had enabled him to smile at 
disasters in which only the innocent suffered; and, 
presently, with a fresh supply of innocents, to make 
a fresh and not less profitable start. 

In the Nicaragua affair no unpleasant reflections 
were cast upon the Colonel's honesty by his immedi- 
ate friends; had any one suggested that he possessed 
a sufiicient amount of honesty to catch even a very 
small reflection they doubtless would have smiled; 
but they frankly and profanely admitted that their 
confidence in his sagacity was destroyed. In their 
coarse but hearty manner they declared that they 
would be blanked before they would chip in with 
such a blank fool again. When the most intimate 
friends of a promoter use language of this sort about 
him, it is evident that his sphere of usefulness in 
promotion must be materially contracted. In the 
case of Colonel Withersby it was contracted about 
to the vanishing point. In his prompt military way 
(he had served, with a constantly increasing credit 
to himself, as a sutler in the late war) he perceived 
how shattered were his frontiers, and how gloomy 
was the outlook toward their rectification; and there- 
fore it was that he described himself as being "in 
a blanked bad hole." His profane emphasis was 
borne out by the facts. 

Naturally, the coming of the Marques de Valde- 
flores at this critical juncture was regarded by the 

ii6 




W^i^,>--^.j^_ 



't-V 



COLONEL WITHERSBY, PROMOTER OF RAILWAYS 



THE MARQUES DE VALDEFLORES 

Colonel as nothing less than providential. Not 
only was the acquaintance of a rich nobleman desir- 
able on general principles — since such a personage 
might reasonably be expected to subscribe liberally 
to any stock, and to give strength to any company 
by permitting the use of his name on the board of 
direction — but the Colonel saw much that was com- 
forting in the opening possibility of shifting his pro- 
moting interests from Spanish America to Old Spain. 
In the colonies he was forced to contend against the 
adverse influence of his own widely diffused repu- 
tation as a too skilful financier — a reputation that 
most seriously militated against his promoting any- 
thing whatever. In the parent country, as both 
hope and modesty advised him, there was a fair 
chance that he might carry on business quietly, un- 
hampered by his own renown. 

Taking this cheerful view of what a friendship 
with the Marques was likely to do for him, he spoke 
only the literal truth when he told that nobleman 
that he would have much pleasure in showing him 
the town. As the event proved, the Marques was 
not desirous of seeing the town within the full mean- 
ing of the Colonel's words; but he repeatedly did 
accept invitations to the theatre, and also accepted 
cheerfully the refreshments of a vinous nature of- 
fered to him by the Colonel with an excellent hospi- 
tality in the intervals and at the ends of the several 
performances which they witnessed together. That 
on these and on all other possible occasions he should 
have his attention pointedly directed to the subject 
of tramways was a foregone conclusion, for tram- 

117 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

ways were the very essence of the Colonel's life. 
What was more surprising, and to the Colonel emi- 
nently pleasing, was the fact that he manifested in 
regard to tramways an intelligent interest. He men- 
tioned, by way of explaining his possession of so 
unusually large a fund of accurate information upon 
this subject, that he owned some shares in a tramway 
company recently organized in Madrid. The enter- 
prise had turned out very well, he said; so well, in- 
deed, that he greatly regretted that when the shares 
first were put upon the market he had not taken a 
larger block. This was a sentiment that the Colonel 
never had heard advanced by a single one of the 
numerous purchasers of shares which he himself 
had floated. It surprised and delighted him. Here 
indeed was a field the working of which promised 
well. And so vigorously did Colonel Withersby 
proceed to work it that within a week he and the 
Marques were discussing energetically the details 
of a plan for building an urban tramway — eventu- 
ally to have suburban extensions — in the city of 
Tarazona. That the Colonel never before had so 
much as heard the name of this city — it was selected 
because the most considerable of the estates of the 
Marques lay near to it — did not in the least interfere 
with his going into the enterprise heart and soul. 
The name was a good one for a prospectus. That 
was quite enough for him. He sat down quickly at 
a writing-table and wrote a prospectus — his skill was 
prodigious in this line of composition — in which he 
proved conclusively that the Compaiiia Limitada 
de Ferrocarriles de la Ciudad de Tarazona y sus 

ii8 



THE MARQUES DE VALDEFLORES 

Alrededores was the most promising financial en- 
terprise in which the investing pubHc ever had 
been permitted to purchase the few remaining 
shares. 

But pleased though the Colonel naturally was at 
having thus struck what had every appearance of 
being a pay streak of phenomenal thickness and 
width, he was not a little disheartened, as time went 
on without materially advancing the Tarazona tram- 
way enterprise, by the conviction that the ore was 
of an eminently refractory type. So far as projec- 
tion was concerned, the Marques was all that the 
most sanguine promoter could ask; but in the matter 
of coming down to the hard-pan, to use the Colonel's 
phrase, he left a good deal to be desired. Under 
other and more favorable conditions the Colonel's 
vigorous method would have been to get his scheme 
into tangible shape by the organization of a com- 
pany, which he then would have asked the Marques 
to join as chairman; and by the printing of some 
thousands of certificates of shares, a considerable 
portion of which he would have "placed" with his 
friends, and the remaining more considerable portion 
of which he would have asked the Marques to pur- 
chase. Then he would have strewn the prospectus 
broadcast throughout the land. If it took, and there 
was a demand for the stock — ^well, then the Colonel 
and his friends would see that the demand was sup- 
plied, even at the sacrifice of their own holdings. 
Should they be compelled by a high sense of duty 
to make a sacrifice of that nature, they would then, 
of course, retire from the management. Having 

119 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

enabled it to win its way to popular favor, they 
would permit the Compaiiia Limitada de Ferro- 
carriles de la Ciudad de Tarazona y sus Alrededores 
to go it alone. 

Under the existing highly unfavorable conditions 
this masterly line of action could not be pursued. 
Those who had been the friends of his bosom, before 
the Nicaragua catastrophe, standing ready to help 
in the organization of anything, and willing to 
permit any number of shares to stand in their 
names, now would have none of him. Their dis- 
position was wholly that of priests and Levites. 
They declined with maledictions to act as directors. 
They declared in the most profanely positive terms 
that they would not lend him a solitary imprecated 
cent. Yet without some slight advance of ready 
money — his own scant savings from the Nicaragua 
wreck being about expended — he could do nothing. 
His prospectus must be printed, and so must his 
share certificates — and even the most sanguine of 
the bank-note companies declined to execute his 
order save on a basis of fifty per cent, deposited in 
advance. 

The only line of action that appeared to be open 
to him in the premises was to induce the Marques 
to come down with the trifling amount demanded 
by the bank-note company, and to permit the use 
of his name as chairman of the yet-to-be-organized 
board. With that much of a start, the Colonel's 
hopeful nature led him to believe that he could scare 
up a board of direction somehow; and, if he could 
not, he was prepared to fill in the gap temporarily 

1 20 



THE MARQUES DE VALDEFLORES 

with a list of names copied from the nearest tomb- 
stones. But when this modest plan — not including, 
however, a statement of the source whence the 
names of his fellow-directors might be drawn — ^was 
formulated and presented, the Marques toyed with 
it in a manner that provoked Colonel Withersby to 
violent profanity in private, and that seemed more 
than likely to end by driving him mad. One day 
he would manifest every disposition to fall in with 
the Colonel's proposals, and the very next day he 
would treat the whole matter as though it had been 
at that moment opened to him for the first time. 
That he continued to accept the various entertain- 
ments, with their accompanying refreshments, which 
the Colonel offered him, only made the situation 
the more trying. Having been begun, these hospi- 
talities could not well be abandoned. But it was 
entirely obvious to the Colonel that they could not 
go on much longer unless he could succeed in making 
some sort of a strike. As he put it, in the mining 
phraseology that was habitual with him, the dumps 
were cleaned up, there was nothing but wall in sight, 
and he had either to open a new prospect or go flat 
on his back on the bed-rock. Truly, by this time, 
the hole that he was in was a desperately deep one, 
and he was at the very bottom of it. With all his 
vigor, and in the matter of cursing he had a great 
deal of vigor, he cursed the hour in which the Mar- 
ques de Valdeflores had come out of Spain. 

Being in this bitter mood, Colonel Withersby 
turned to Monsieur Duvent and Mrs. Mortimer — 
whose disposition toward the Marques he shrewdly 

121 



AT THE CASA NAPOLEON 

inferred was quite as bitter as his own — ^with a re- 
quest for aid in realizing a little plan by which their 
several sacrifices of cash upon the altar of a singularly 
barren friendship certainly would be restored to them; 
and even might be restored to them as much as fourfold. 

In presenting his plan to his friends Colonel 
Withersby's supporting argument was statesman- 
like. If the Marques were a genuine Marques, he 
said, and as rich as he professed himself to be, the 
loss of five hundred dollars, or even of five thousand 
dollars, could make no possible difference to him. 
If, on the other hand, he were a bogus Marques, 
and his wealth also a sham, no harm could come 
from shearing him in so far as he could be shorn, 
and thereafter turning him adrift to run away with 
the flock of black lambs to which, as then would be 
demonstrated, he properly belonged. Indeed, so 
far from harm coming of this preliminary snipping, 
it would yield the valuable result of proving beyond 
a perad venture the quality of the fleece; and so 
would determine whether or not his, the Colonel's, 
time and talents could be employed to advantage 
in endeavoring to eff'ect the more radical shearing 
that would remove every vestige of merchantable 
wool. In brief, the Colonel's plan, the logical con- 
clusion from these premises, was that they should 
relieve the Marques of a few of his Spanish dollars 
in the course of a quiet evening at play. 

Argument of this able sort, especially when ad- 
dressed to persons already more than disposed to 
fall in with its conclusions, was convincing. Mrs. 
Mortimer, it is true— she was a cautious person, 

122 



THE MARQUES DE VALDEFLORES 

who played slowly and prudently the interesting 
games in which she was engaged — did hesitate a 
little, but presently said with an agreeable cordi- 
ality that the Colonel had done her many good turns 
in the past, and that she gladly would do him a good 
turn now by assisting to the best of her ability in 
making his plan a working success. Probably there 
was a great store of womanly tenderness and self- 
sacrifice in Mrs. Mortimer's nature. Indeed, the accu- 
mulation of those gentle qualities must have been very 
considerable, for she rarely made any use of them. 

Monsieur Duvent did not hesitate at all. The 
chance of getting a shot direct at the Marques de- 
lighted him. Unhampered by the arbitrary and 
annoying regulations of a banking system that he 
despised but could not defy, he felt a comfortable 
conviction that he could balance, even to the ex- 
tent of tipping it decidedly in the other direction, 
the account that stood so heavily against him. He 
therefore willingly promised to provide the five 
hundred dollars of visible capital that the occasion 
called for; and even consented to divide with Mrs. 
Mortimer — in the improbable event of failure to 
secure from the Marques at least this trifling amount 
— the cost of the little supper that would precede the 
more serious entertainment in which their Spanish 
friend would be requested to take part. 

IV 

By those privileged to enjoy them, as already 
has been intimated, the coziness of Mrs. Mortimer's 

123 



AT THE CASA NAPOLEON 

little suppers was justly esteemed. Usually they 
were limited to herself and a single guest; never 
were they suffered to exceed the sociable num- 
ber of four. Mrs. Mortimer's tastes were not pre- 
cisely simple; but she was of a shy, retiring nature, 
and she detested a crowd. 

On the present occasion it was pleasant to behold 
— had there been anybody to behold it — the warm 
cordiality that was developed between these four 
agreeable people as this charming little supper moved 
smoothly along from the cocktails which began it 
(cocktails before supper had the merit of novelty 
to the Marques; he took to them most kindly) to 
the coffee that brought it to an end. Mrs. Morti- 
mer's fine social qualities enabled her to make each 
one of her guests appear at his very best, and also 
to appreciate at its full value his own appearance. 
She was well acquainted with Colonel Withersby's 
best stories, and she skilfully led up to them; she 
understood Monsieur Duvent's professional dispo- 
sition toward taciturnity, and covered it so admira- 
bly as to give the impression that he was positively 
loquacious; when the conversation showed the least 
tendency toward flagging, she herself was as prompt 
to fill the impending pause with sparkling anecdote 
as in its more lively periods she was ready still far- 
ther to stimulate it by sprightly repartee. Being 
conducted in the French and Spanish tongues — 
the Marques did not speak English^the talk natu- 
rally followed the genius of these languages, and was 
possibly a trifle freer than it would have been had 
English been employed as the medium for the inter- 

124 



THE MARQUES DE VALDEFLORES 

change of thought. As the evening advanced, this 
liberal tendency became somewhat more marked. 

It was, however, in her demeanor toward the 
Marques that Mrs. Mortimer's admirable qualities 
as a hostess most brilliantly were displayed. Her 
gracious friendliness was manifested by a hand 
frankly placed upon his shoulder as she bent over 
him to offer coffee (her merry conceit being to serve 
this beverage herself); by exchanging glasses with 
him when she drank his health; by her use of her 
prodigiously handsome brown eyes — and in a hun- 
dred other artless and pretty ways. As to her clev- 
erness in creating conversational situations that 
enabled him to say bright things, it really was as- 
tonishing. As has been stated, the disposition of 
the Marques at all times was friendly; under these 
exceptionally agreeable conditions he became posi- 
tively effusive. Yet, though his manner really was 
frankness itself, Mrs. Mortimer's fine perception 
suggested to her mind the troubling doubt that per- 
haps his effusiveness in some small part was assumed. 
Possibly a similar thought was entertained by Mon- 
sieur Duvent — but in the case of Monsieur Duvent 
the fact must be remembered that his professional 
experience had begotten in him what might be termed 
an almost morbid suspicion of his kind. 

Until the middle of the feast was passed. Colonel 
Withersby also debated within himself whether or 
not the good feeling that the Marques so liberally 
manifested was wholly genuine. After that period 
— his own generous nature being then warmed and 
stimulated by the very considerable quantities of 

125 



AT THE CASA NAPOLEON 

the excellent food and drink which had become a 
part of it — he dismissed all such evil suspicions 
from his manly breast as being alike unworthy of 
himself and of his noble friend. The Marques, as 
he declared heartily in his thought, was as straight 
as a string, and a jolly good fellow all the way 
through. It was a peculiarity of Colonel Withers- 
by's temperament — a peculiarity that on more than 
one occasion had betrayed his substantial interests 
— that his usually keen and severe judgment of men 
and things was subject to serious derangement by 
an access of what may be termed vinous benevo- 
lence. Mrs. Mortimer and Monsieur Duvent, being 
among the most intimate of the Colonel's friends, 
were well acquainted with this genial failing in his 
lofty character; and, because of their knowledge of 
it, they viewed with an increasing alarm his increas- 
ing disposition to make the spirit of the occasion 
so largely a part of himself. They were sustained, 
however, by the comforting knowledge — bred of an 
extended acquaintance with his methods — that even 
when the Colonel had associated an extraordinary 
quantity of extraneous spirits with his own, he still 
could play a phenomenally good game of cards. 

Without thought of the anxiety that his cheerful 
conviviality was occasioning his friends, the Colonel 
rattled away in his most lively manner, and mani- 
fested toward the Marques a constantly increasing 
cordiality. Indeed, by the time that they had 
reached the coffee and cigars (Mrs. Mortimer was 
considerate enough to permit the gentlemen to 
smoke) his disposition was to vow eternal friendship 

126 



THE MARQUES DE VALDEFLORES 

with the Marques, and to seal his vow, in the Span- 
ish fashion, with a fraternal embrace. But in de- 
spite of this tendency of his affectionate nature to- 
ward overflow, the confidence of his friends in his 
sound judgment remaining unimpaired in the midst 
of its alcoholic environment was not misplaced. His 
heart, it is true, was mellowed almost to melting; 
but it also is true that his head remained admirably 
cool. Sentiment, with the Colonel, was one thing; 
business was another. His warm fraternal feeling 
for the Marques did not for one moment interfere 
with his fixed intention to work him, as he somewhat 
coarsely had expressed it, for all that he was worth. 
It was with this utilitarian purpose full in view 
that the Colonel suggested — the pleasures of eating 
being ended but the pleasures of drinking and 
smoking still continuing — that they should end 
their agreeable evening with a quiet game of cards. 
Being gentlemen of the world, the Marques and 
Monsieur Duvent readily fell in with this proposal. 
Mrs. Mortimer, it is true — although undoubtedly 
a lady of the world — entered a gentle remonstrance 
against so engrossing a form of amusement: on the 
ground that it would check the flow of brilliant 
conversation, and also, as she playfully added, would 
deprive her of the undivided attention which was 
her due. The gentlemen, however, explained that 
as the game would be played merely as a pastime, 
and for insignificant stakes, it would not in the 
smallest degree interfere with conversation; and they 
vowed and protested that under no circumstances 
could they fail to pay their tribute of homage to 

127 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

Mrs. Mortimer's charms. In view of this expla- 
nation, and of the gallant declaration that accom- 
panied it, the lady was pleased to withdraw her 
objections, and even to consent to take part in the 
game. But she was a very stupid player, she said; 
and she expressed much good-humored regret for 
whoever should be unlucky enough to be her partner 
— she was so careless, she protested, and did make 
such perfectly horrid mistakes! 

There was a trifling delay in beginning the game, 
due to Mrs. Mortimer's professed inability to find 
the cards with which to play it. She was perfectly 
sure, she said, that somewhere about her apartment 
there was a little bundle containing half a dozen 
new packs; they had been given to her quite recently 
by one of her friends; where she had put them she 
could not remember at all. Her memory was so 
outrageously bad, she added, while continuing her 
search, that her life was made a veritable burden 
to her. Truly, Mrs. Mortimer's memory could not 
have been a very good one, for the package had been 
presented to her — the amiable anonymous friend 
to whom she owed it being, in point of fact. Colonel 
Withersby — at a period no more remote than that 
very afternoon; yet a good ten minutes passed be- 
fore she could remember that she had placed it in 
a drawer of her escritoire upon receiving it from the 
Colonel's hands. 

She laughed merrily over her own stupidity when 
at last the missing package was found; and she 
laughed still more when, having cut for partners, 
what she gaily referred to as the dreadfully bad luck 

128 



THE MARQUES DE VALDEFLORES 

of the Marques made them aUies against Colonel 
Withersby and Monsieur Duvent. Their defeat, 
she declared, was a foregone conclusion; it really 
was too bad! The Marques, for his part, vowed 
that he was so indifferent a player that he would 
be grateful to her for the mistakes which would 
keep his own lapses in countenance; and politely 
added that defeat in her company would give him a 
pleasure far superior to that conferred by a victory 
in which she had no share. In the matter of making 
handsome speeches the Marques de Valdeflores was 
not easily to be outdone. 

Yet, in despite of Mrs. Mortimer's bad play — 
concerning which, politeness aside, there could be 
no question — and in despite of the far from brilliant 
play of her partner, the game for some little time 
went decidedly in their favor. This was in part ac- 
counted for by the fact that the hands which they 
held were phenomenally good, while the hands held 
by their adversaries were correspondingly bad. So 
marked was the run of luck in their favor — being 
most marked, indeed, when the deal lay with Colonel 
Withersby or Monsieur Duvent — that the Colonel 
swore, in his bluff, hearty way, that the devil him- 
self was in the pack, and was manipulating it for the 
express purpose of punishing him, the Colonel, for 
his sins; at which humorous sally there was a gen- 
eral laugh. 

However, at the end of an hour — by which time 
rather more than half of the capital provided for the 
occasion by Monsieur Duvent was arranged before 
Mrs. Mortimer in a gay little pile — the Colonel said 

129 



AT THE CASA NAPOLEON 

quite seriously that the luck of the pack certainly 
was against him, and begged that it might be 
changed. There was a smile, of course, at the Col- 
onel's superstition; but the Marques promptly con- 
ceded the favor requested, and induced Mrs. Morti- 
mer also to grant it: which was not an easy matter, 
for she declared that she needed all that good luck 
could do for her in order to hold her own. 

The event really seemed to justify the Colonel's 
superstitious fancy, for with the very first deal of 
the new pack — he dealt it himself — the luck entirely 
changed. In view of this fact, of the agreement that 
the stakes should be increased so that the losers 
might have a better chance to recoup, and of the 
marked increase in the number of Mrs. Mortimer's 
mistakes, it will be perceived that there were several 
excellent reasons why the handsome accumulation 
of gold in front of Mrs. Mortimer should go even 
more quickly than it had come. But, oddly enough, 
it did not go. The play of the Marques was made 
in the same negligent manner that it had been 
made from the start; but Monsieur Duvent ob- 
served — not without a touch of that admiration 
which every professional, even though unwillingly, 
concedes to professional skill — that its quality had 
entirely changed. It was not brilliant, but it was 
cautious, firm, and extraordinarily sure. When he 
dealt, his own hand was as strikingly good as it was 
strikingly bad when the deal lay with the Colonel 
or with Monsieur Duvent; Mrs. Mortimer's mis- 
takes — they were very numerous — ^were handsomely 
covered, and even sometimes were turned to ad- 

130 



THE MARQUES DE VALDEFLORES 

vantage; his conduct of the game, in short, was 
masterly — and the gay Httle pile in front of his part- 
ner, so far from diminishing, steadily increased. 
Monsieur Duvent shot an inquiring glance from 
under his bushy gray eyebrows across the table at 
the Colonel. As understood by that gentleman it 
meant: "Who have we got here, anyway?" The 
Colonel's answering glance was intended to convey 
his strong conviction that — to paraphrase euphe- 
mistically his" thought — the cloven hoof of their ad- 
versary was invisible only because it was covered 
with a neatly made patent-leather boot. At the 
end of the second hour the entire capital provided 
by Monsieur Duvent had changed hands. 

At this stage of proceedings Monsieur Duvent 
and the Colonel, taking advantage of an interrup- 
tion in the game caused by the serving of fresh 
coffee, held a short conference. Monsieur Duvent 
expressed decidedly the opinion that they had bet- 
ter stop. The Marques, if he were a Marques, evi- 
dently knew more than they did. The part of 
prudence was to make the best of a bad bargain 
and to drop him then and there. But the Colonel, 
whose fighting spirit was thoroughly aroused, would 
not for a moment consent to such ignominious sur- 
render. He insisted that Monsieur Duvent should 
provide another five hundred — merely for a show, 
he said — and that the game should go on. By sheer 
force of will — the Colonel was a most resolute per- 
son — he succeeded in carrying his point. Sorely, 
against his better judgment, but still yielding. Mon- 
sieur Duvent produced from a reserved fund in his 

10 131 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

private chamber the sum required; whereupon, the 
coffee being finished, the game went on. But it 
went on so disastrously that at the end of another 
hour the fresh supply of capital was exhausted — 
and Monsieur Duvent's thousand was arranged in 
front of Mrs. Mortimer in ten neat little piles. Grat- 
ifying though it was on abstract grounds to perceive 
his own wisdom thus triumph over the Colonel's 
fatuous folly, there was such substantial cause for 
annoyance in the situation that Monsieur Duvent 
found no enjoyment in it. Mieux vaut un sage 
ennemi quun sot ami,W2is the thought that just then 
occurred to him — with the unpleasing corollary re- 
flection that at that precise juncture he had them 
both. With a smile that lacked a little in spon- 
taneity he suggested that they now had played long 
enough. 

In this temperate proposition, with excellent good- 
breeding, the Marques at once concurred. But the 
Colonel — having continued as the night wore on to 
expand his spirits factitiously — ^would not listen to 
it at all. He was for fighting as long as any sort of 
a shot remained in the locker. He advanced this 
view with emphasis; and suggested that in lieu of 
cash the Marques should receive — should his very 
extraordinary luck continue — his, the Colonel's, 
written promises of payment, to be redeemed on 
the ensuing day. Monsieur Duvent, of course, 
could not reasonably object to going on when capi- 
tal of this possibly attenuated nature was employed; 
and the Marques accepted the proposal with a polite 
alacrity that quite touched the Colonel's heart. 

132 



THE MARQUES DE VALDEFLORES 

On the promissory basis thus estabHshed, but 
with the luck steadily against the Colonel and his 
partner, the game was continued until four o'clock 
in the morning. When that hour arrived the Mar- 
ques announced placidly that, inasmuch as he was 
habitually an early riser, it really was time for him 
to go to bed. He had greatly enjoyed his evening, 
he said; it was one of the most agreeable and amus- 
ing evenings, in fact, that he had ever passed. In 
handsome terms he smilingly congratulated Mrs. 
Mortimer upon the good luck that had attended her 
bad play, and insisted that two-thirds of their joint 
winnings should be hers. Nothing could be more 
liberal than this arrangement. In pursuance of it 
he turned over to her the two thousand dollars rep- 
resented by Colonel Withersby's paper, and slipped 
the thousand dollars in gold into his own pocket as 
his own modest share. Then he shook hands heartily 
with the gentlemen; gallantly kissed the tips of 
Mrs. Mortimer's white fingers; and bidding the 
company a most cordial good-night, left the room. 
As the door closed behind him there was a moment 
of silence; and then the Colonel — in what, perhaps, 
was luridly accurate minor prophecy — accurately 
expressed the sense of the meeting in the terse ob- 
servation: "Well, I'll be—!" 



In the early afternoon of the day that had begun 
for them so disastrously, a little council of war was 
held by the vanquished in Mrs. Mortimer's apart-. 

133 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

ment. In a general way, the council was swayed 
by a common motive; but its several members con- 
templated this motive through the media of widely 
differing moods. 

Mrs. Mortimer, sitting with her back to the care- 
fully adjusted light, apparently was none the worse 
for her late hours; and she was by no means cast 
down by the defeat that she had witnessed but in 
which she had not precisely shared. Her net loss, 
after all, was only half the cost of the little supper; 
and she was not by any means certain that this loss 
was absolute — rather was she inclined to look upon 
it in the light of an investment. Marques or no 
Marques, the Spanish gentleman had commended 
himself heartily to her good graces by his obviously 
masterful qualities in the acquisition of property. 
Mrs. Mortimer had seen too much of the world to be 
dazzled by a title; that which inspired her respect 
and won her esteem was substantial wealth — and her 
liberal spirit held her high above all petty and trivial 
objections to the manner in which the wealth was 
acquired. That it actually existed was quite enough 
for her. She was absolutely indifferent, therefore, 
as to whether the Marques de Valdeflores possessed 
large hereditary estates in Spain or large hereditary 
skill in playing games of so - called chance. In 
either case the result practically was the same: he 
was a man of substance with whom the most friendly 
relations eminently were to be desired. She had ob- 
served also with pleasure that his caution was equal 
to his skill. Although herself the sufferer by it, she 
had commended him rather than blamed him for 

134 



THE MARQUES DE VALDEFLORES 

his intelligent division of their joint winnings. On 
the face of it, that division had been characterized 
by a magnificent generosity; but no one knew bet- 
ter than she did that the generosity was more ap- 
parent than real. Before retiring, she had used 
twelve hundred dollars' worth of Colonel Withers- 
by's paper in crimping her hair, and carelessly had 
thrown the remainder of his insecurities into her 
waste-paper basket. Some disagreeable reflections, 
it is true, had attended her prodigal use of the im- 
potentiality of wealth that the Marques had lavished 
upon her; but, at the same time, she had been un- 
able to withhold her profound respect for the deli- 
cate adroitness that his conduct of this transaction 
had displayed. His method had nothing coarse 
about it. It was not bludgeon work; it was the 
effective finesse of the rapier. Mrs. Mortimer was 
not a bad hand, in a lady-like way, at rapier prac- 
tice herself. She felt that could she but ally herself 
with such a past master of the art as the Marques 
had proved himself to be, her future would be as- 
sured. She came to the council, therefore, in the 
spirit of doves and olive branches, with every fibre 
of her tender being prepared to thrill responsive 
to the soft phrase of peace. Her proposition was, 
the Marques having proved himself to be a good 
deal more than a match for them, that they should 
cease to regard him as an enemy, and should 
frankly invite him to be their associate and 
friend. 

In opposition to these peaceful views of Mrs. 
Mortimer's, Colonel Withersby — coming to the coun- 

^3S 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

cil with the vigor and in the temper of a giant re- 
freshed with cocktails — was all for war. The Col- 
onel's pride was wounded; his finer sensibilities 
were hurt. The very qualities which Mrs. Mortimer 
most admired in the Marques — his delicate method, 
his refined skill, his perfect savoir-faire — ^were pre- 
cisely the qualities which the Colonel most strongly 
resented. It was cruelly galling to his self-respect 
to be conquered with weapons which he perceived 
were infinitely superior to his own, and which he 
also perceived were hopelessly beyond his power to 
use. In the course of his rather remarkably varie- 
gated career. Colonel Withersby repeatedly had 
received what he was wont to describe, in his richly 
figurative language, as black eyes; but he always 
had had at least the poor satisfaction of knowing 
how and why the darkening of his orbs of vision 
had been achieved. In this case, however, he did 
not know how, still less why, his adversary had tri- 
umphed over him. Certainly Monsieur Duvent 
had made no mistakes; save in the matter of un- 
wisely prolonging the play, he himself had made 
no mistakes; and Mrs. Mortimer, to do her justice, 
had made all the mistakes expected of her and even 
a few to spare. Rarely had three intelligent persons 
contrived a more effective programme; rarely had 
such a programme been more exactly carried out. 
Humanly and logically, its results should have been 
honorable victory attended by substantial spoils. Yet 
its diabolical and illogical result actually was humili- 
ating disaster attended by substantial loss. Being 
at the best of times but a heathen, it is not sur- 

136 



THE MARQUES DE VALDEFLORES 

prising that in these trying circumstances Colonel 
Withersby raged; nor that, raging, he cast his voice 
for war. 

Monsieur Duvent, whose temperament was con- 
servative, rejected the Colonel's truculent sugges- 
tions and ranged himself with Mrs. Mortimer on 
the side of a profitable peace. Their Spanish friend, 
he declared, speaking out of the wealth of his ex- 
perience of the world, evidently was not a Marques; 
he was one of themselves. It was generally con- 
ceded, he continued, that dog ought not to eat dog 
(Monsieur Duvent expressed this concept, of course, 
in its French equivalent: les loups ne se mangent pas 
entre eux); and it was universally admitted that 
when a feast of this unnatural sort took place only 
the dog who did the eating got any real good from 
it. They themselves, he pointed out — especially he 
himself, since his was the capital that the Marques 
had absorbed — occupied the position of the other 
dog, the eaten one. Obviously that position was as 
unprofitable as it was humiliating. Consequently, 
he concluded, their rational course in the premises 
was that which Mrs. Mortimer had indicated: to 
seek an alliance with this most accomplished person 
— ^which should be continued, at least, until they 
had mastered the secrets of his superior skill. When 
they knew as much as he did, said Monsieur Duvent, 
they could throw him over and have done with him; 
just at present he knew a great deal more than they 
did, and it was largely to their interest to make him 
their friend. There was no false pride about Mon- 
sieur Duvent. His thirst for professional knowl- 

137 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

edge was inexhaustible, and he was eager at all 
times to slake it at any source. 

Colonel Withersby was not pleased to find him- 
self so conspicuously in a minority; and he was 
open, not to say violent, in expressing his displeasure. 
His was a bold, aggressive nature — and the cocktails 
wherewith he had refreshed himself had not tended 
to take any of the fighting spirit out of him. Had 
he not occupied the trying position of a dependent 
— for without the assistance of his friends he would 
lack sinews for his intended war — he would have 
been abusive. Under the existing conditions he 
was argumentative. The Spaniard, he admitted, 
certainly knew a great deal about cards; in that line 
of gentlemanly amusement, no doubt, it would be 
well to avoid any farther trial of conclusions with 
him. But when it came to dice, the case was dif- 
ferent. In throwing dice, the Colonel declared with 
a sincere immodesty, he had yet to meet the man 
who could get ahead of him. Let him but have a 
square chance to settle matters on that basis with 
the Marques and all would yet be well. The others, 
if they did not want to, need not appear in the mat- 
ter at all. If they would but set him up with a beg- 
garly hundred — merely enough to make a show with 
— he would ask no more of them. Being thus started, 
he would go ahead and win the victory alone. And 
finally, with the most convincing self-imprecations 
if he didn't, the Colonel protested that he would 
divide on the square. 

Monsieur Duvent stroked doubtfully his respect- 
able gray mustache. On the one hand he had great 

13S 



THE MARQUES DE VALDEFLORES 

confidence in the Colonel's skill in the manipulation 
of dice. On the other hand his estimate of the skill 
of the Marques in all directions was very high. It 
was altogether probable, he thought, that a man 
who evidently had made so profound a study of the 
scientific possibilities of pasteboard had pressed his 
researches not less deeply into the scientific possi- 
bilities of ivory. If he had, then would the Colonel 
be but as wax in his hands. Therefore Monsieur 
Duvent hesitated; and with each moment of his 
hesitation his disposition tended the more strongly 
to take the ground that he declined to throw good 
money after bad. 

Fortunately for Colonel Withersby, the tender 
nature of Mrs. Mortimer had not been appealed to 
in vain. As she herself had said, the Colonel had 
done her many good turns in the past; and she saw 
no reason for doubting that he might do her many 
more good turns in the future — which latter con- 
sideration may have been remotely the cause of the 
flood of kindly intention that now welled up within 
her breast. She was a pronounced free-trader, and 
her knowledge of the world assured her that reci- 
procity could not always be only on one side. Had 
the Colonel asked her to join him openly in carrying 
on his campaign against the Marques, she certainly 
would have refused his request. That would have 
been asking too much. But the Colonel's proposal 
to fight his battle alone — and to divide the spoils 
in case he should be victorious — put the matter on 
a basis that enabled her to give free play to the gen- 
erous dictates of her heart. She therefore added her 

139 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

entreaties to his appeal to Monsieur Duvent for 
assistance; and even went so far as to offer to join 
equally with that gentleman in providing the small 
amount of capital without which the little venture 
in ivory could not be launched. 

Whether or not this liberal offer would have suf- 
ficed to overcome Monsieur Duvent's parsimoni- 
ous hesitancy, never will be known. At the very 
moment that he opened his mouth to speak the words 
which no doubt would have been decisive, there was 
a knock at the door; then a servant entered bearing a 
great bunch of magnificent roses — all of which, how- 
ever, being very full blown, were somewhat past 
their prime. An envelope directed to Mrs. Mortimer 
was attached to this handsome yet slightly equiv- 
ocal floral tribute. Within the envelope was the 
card of the Marques de Valdeflores, on which was 
pencilled the request that she would accept the ac- 
companying trifling souvenir of the very agreeable 
evening that he had passed in her company and in 
the company of her friends. In the right hand bot- 
tom corner of the card were added the letters : P. P. 
C. In many ways Mrs. Mortimer was not a perfect 
woman, but among her imperfections was not that 
of stupidity. As she looked at this bunch of too- 
full-blown roses, and realized the message that it 
was intended delicately to convey, the dove-like 
and olive-branching sentiments departed from her 
breast — and in their place came sentiments com- 
pounded of daggers and bow-strings and very poi- 
sonous bowls! 

As for Colonel Withersby, having but glanced at 

140 



THE MARQUES DE VALDEFLORES 

the fateful letters on the card that Mrs. Mortimer 
mutely handed him, he descended to the office of 
the Casa Napoleon in little more than a single 
bound. In little more than two bounds he returned 
to the first floor. Consternation was written upon 
his expressive face, and also rage. In a sentence 
that was nothing short of blistering in its intensity 
he announced the ruinous fact that the Marques 
de Valdeflores had sailed at six o'clock that morning 
on the French steamer, and at that moment must 
be at least two hundred miles out at sea! 



VI 

Dr. Theophile had but little to say when Madame 
told him with triumphal sorrow that the Marques 
de Valdeflores had paid his bill in full and had de- 
parted for his native Spain. Madame's mixture 
of sentiments was natural. Her triumph was be- 
cause her estimate of the financial integrity of the 
Marques had been justified by the event; her sor- 
row was because so profitable a patron was gone 
from the Casa Napoleon. The few words which 
Dr. Theophile spoke, in his softened French of 
Guadeloupe, were to the eff'ect that a man was not 
necessarily a Marques because he happened to pay 
his bill at a hotel. Madame resented this answer 
hotly. It was more, she said, than ungenerous; 
it was heartlessly unjust. She challenged Dr. Theo- 
phile to disprove by any evidence save his own 
miserable suspicions that the Marques was not a 

141 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

Marques; she defied him to do his worst! Dr. 
Theophile said mildly that he really could not afford 
the time requisite for abstract research of this nature, 
and added that he had no worst to do. Madame 
declared that his reply was inconclusive; an ob- 
vious endeavor to evade the question that he him- 
self had raised. Dr. Theophile smiled pleasantly 
and answered that, as usual, she was quite right. 

Had Madame only known it, she might have called 
Colonel Withersby as a witness in her behalf; for 
the Colonel, had he been willing to testify, could 
have made her triumph over Dr. Theophile com- 
plete. Being curious to get down to what he termed 
the hard-pan in regard to the Marques, he had made 
an expedition of inquiry to the Spanish consulate 
on the very day that that nobleman had sailed away. 

Certainly, said the polite young man who answered 
his pointed question, the Marques de Valdeflores 
had been in New York for nearly a month. His visit 
had been one of business — to arrange with a firm 
of American contractors for the building of a tram- 
way in the city of Tarazona. He had completed 
his business satisfactorily and had returned to Spain. 

The Colonel's usually ruddy face whitened a little 
as he listened to this statement. The tramway 
project really, then, had been a substantial one 
after all! This was bitter indeed. But perhaps it 
was not true; the young man might be only chaff- 
ing him. His voice was hoarse, and there was a 
perceptible break in it as he said: "Honest Injun, 
now. You're giving it to me straight?" 

The young man looked puzzled. He was by no 

142 



THE MARQUES DE VALDEFLORES 

means familiar with the intricacies of the Enghsh 
language, and his mental translation of these words 
into literal Spanish did not yield a very intelligible 
result. 

Perceiving the confusion that was caused by his 
use of a too extreme form of his own vernacular, 
the Colonel repeated his question in substance in 
the Spanish tongue: *'0f a truth he is a Marques, 
and rich? There is no mistake?" 

The young man perceptibly brightened. *^0h, 
of a truth there is no mistake, senor," he answered. 
"He is a Marques, and enormously rich. To see 
him you would not think so, perhaps, for his habits 
are very simple, and he is as modest in his manner 
as in his dress. You see, he has given much of his 
time to business matters; and he has travelled a 
great deal." 

Colonel Withersby withdrew from the consulate. 
His desire for information was more than satisfied; 
it was satiated. In the relative privacy of the pas- 
sageway, outside the consulate door, his pent-up 
feelings found vent. 

**Tra veiled, has he?" ejaculated the Colonel, with 
a series of accessory ejaculations of such force that 
the air immediately around him became percep- 
tibly blue. "Travelled! Well, I should say he had! 
IVe travelled a little myself, but Fll be" — again 
the Colonel here dropped into minor prophecy — 
"if he hasn't gone two miles to my one every time!" 



COLONEL WITHERSBY'S '^STRIKE" 




fITHER professionally as ''a promo- 
ter, or personally as an individual, 
Colonel Withersby's claim upon the 
disrespect of his extensive circle of 
acquaintance not only was un- 
questionable but was unquestioned. 
Morally speaking — a form of address with which 
the Colonel himself had nothing in common, be- 
ing one of the less conspicuous but most exem- 
plary immoralists of his time — he was so maculate 
that he fairly was spotted all over with the stains 
of the transactions of various densities of shade 
in which at one time or another he had been 
engaged. But yet, his nature being of the genial 
sort that found expression in a cordial willingness 
to set up drinks for the party whenever he happened 
to be in company and also in funds, he was warmly 
esteemed by the little flock of lost sheep with which 
he habitually pastured at the Casa Napoleon. And 
on his side the Colonel had a feeling of thorough 
good fellowship with these his pastoral associates — 

144 



COLONEL WITHERSBY'S ''STRIKE" 

for he had been a lost sheep himself under many 
widely varied conditions and in many widely sun- 
dered lands. 

At the period here under consideration Colonel 
Withersby's fortunes, as a mining person would 
phrase it, were "pinching out"; that is to say, one 
of his seasons of prosperity was drawing to an end. 
As was usual in his case, this particular season of 
prosperity had taken its rise in a spirited adventure 
in promotion that had turned out — for the promoter 
— very well indeed. 

In placing upon the New York stock-market the 
shares of The International Tramways Company 
(limited) of New York and Bogota the Colonel 
had been actuated, as usual, by the highest motives. 
As he stated in his prospectus, the subscribers to 
this undertaking not only would receive in money 
a very large return upon their investment (an as- 
sertion supported by arithmetical demonstration) 
but would enjoy the higher satisfaction of having 
assisted in diffusing in a sister republic those civil- 
izing influences which flow from the introduction 
of improved means of transportation into any land. 

Actually, this beneficent project had not been 
realized. But that absolute success had not crowned 
the Colonel's philanthropic eff'orts — in other words, 
that not a single foot of tramway had been laid in 
Bogota — ^was due rather to the unfortunate geo- 
graphical situation of the Colombian capital than 
to failure on his part to push the undertaking vigor- 
ously by marketing its shares. Indeed, if any er- 
ror at all was to be charged against him in the prem- 

145 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

ises it was the very venial error of that brave hope- 
fulness which outruns strict discretion in its endeavor 
to accomplish broadly beneficent results. A man 
of colder reason might have perceived before the 
shares were sold — not to say before the Company 
was organized — that serious difficulties would at- 
tend the construction of a tramway in a city lying 
nearly nine thousand feet above the sea-level and 
accessible only by mountain trails. But in con- 
templating the substantial advantages which would 
result from the realization of his project the Colonel's 
sanguine soul altogether ignored this trifling pre- 
liminary detail. Indeed, by the time that the tak- 
ing-in of material came to be considered by the 
Board of Direction he had ceased to be a member 
of that body; and even — having closed out his hold- 
ing of founder's shares at a handsome figure — had 
ceased to have any moneyed or other interest in 
the Company. For the mission in life of this large- 
souled philanthropist was to take only the initia- 
tive in enterprises of a broad usefulness — leaving 
to minds of a smaller calibre the dull details of exe- 
cuting his projects; or, as sometimes happened, 
of getting out of them or of going down with them 
when some overlooked trifle (as in this instance) 
made their execution unfortunately impossible. 

Yet while eminently disastrous to the ultimate 
holders of the Company's insecurities, the result 
of the Bogota venture so far as the Colonel was 
concerned was a brilliant financial success. He had 
charged against the Company, and had collected 
when it was floated, the expenses of promotion; 

146 



COLONEL WITHERSBY'S ''STRIKE" 

he had sold at a handsome figure, as has been stated, 
his founder's shares. As the whole of his outlay 
thus was returned to him, and as his shares had 
cost him nothing — being received in exchange for 
his transfer to the Company of the concession 
which he had secured personally from the Colom- 
bian Government — his profit from the transaction 
was both large and clear. In point of fact when, 
as he expressed it, he "cleaned up the dump" — 
that is to say, when he realized upon his holdings 
and closed his connection with the International 
Tramways Company (limited) of New York and 
Bogota — he was in a position of easy affluence that 
made him careless of immediate consequences and 
indifferent to the assaults of fate. 

"It's been the best thing I ever struck," said the 
Colonel cheerily to Mrs. Mortimer. "It's been 
pay-gravel from first to last, and I've corralled 
enough out of it to keep the wolf from the door for 
the next ten years!" And as he spoke these buoyant 
words he brought his hand down with a sounding 
smack upon his trousers pocket and called to Teles- 
foro to bring two more cocktails. It was late in the 
afternoon, and the Colonel hospitably was offering 
refreshments to Mrs. Mortimer in the Casa res- 
taurant — of which, at that hour, they were the only 
occupants. 

"As things are looking just now," he continued, 
putting down his glass empty and dropping into 
educational and astronomical metaphor with a 
gayety that told of a happy heart, "school may 
keep or not, just as it pleases; and I don't care a 
11 147 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

d — n for the spots on the sun! Here, you black 
nigger — set 'em up again." And so generous was 
the Colonel's mood that Mrs. Mortimer's refusal 
to partake of the third brace of cocktails aroused 
in him feelings of regret which only partially were 
allayed, when the cocktails came, by his drinking 
them both himself. 

Sanguine though were his expectations in regard 
to keeping the wolf from his door, quite possibly 
they might have been realized had the wolf been 
his only enemy in the animal kingdom. Unfortu- 
nately, such was not the case; and in setting so 
remote a limit upon the continuance of his pros- 
perity he had not taken into account the possible 
doings of the tiger — ^with which ferocious creature, 
under the mistaken impression that he was its mas- 
ter, he had maintained injudiciously close relations 
for many years. Within narrow limits, his belief 
in his masterful attitude toward the tiger was well 
founded. When wholly sober. Colonel Withersby 
was one of the most competent manipulators of 
either pasteboard or ivory of his country and age; 
so competent, indeed, that within what may be 
termed his temperate zone he was an almost certain 
winner at any game of so-called chance. But un- 
fortunately — it was one of the venial weaknesses 
of his genially expansive nature — his sobriety was 
eminently discontinuous, and when adrift in his 
tropical latitudes of partial or complete intoxica- 
tion his skill went from him and he was as wax in 
even a mere tyro's hands. From which conditions 
it resulted that while at the outset of his hazards 

148 



COLONEL WITHERSBY^S ^'STRIKE" 

against Fortune he usually was seated upon the 
tiger's back with a confident smile, at the end of 
such ventures he almost invariably was inside the 
tiger — and the smile was on the face of that saga- 
cious but unfaithful animal. And so it came to 
pass that at the end not of ten years but of ten 
months — during which time, to quote his own lan- 
guage, he had "bucked the tiger" with a most 
lamentable persistency — he had parted with so con- 
siderable a part of his Bogota winnings that the 
howls of the approaching wolf sounded with a dismal 
clearness in his ears. 

"What I've got to do," said the Colonel to him- 
self, recognizing the stringency of the impending 
situation and rising to it with a manly heroism, "is 
to hustle around and make a fresh strike. But I 
must say," he added mournfully, with a reproach- 
ful glance at the empty glass in which had been the 
last of a series of inebriating but cheerless cock- 
tails, " I think it's a blank shame that I've got to 
take to hustling again so soon!" 



II 

No one enjoyed more thoroughly than did Colonel 
Withersby the agreeable misuse of a season of un- 
gentlemanly leisure; but, on the other hand, when 
he set hirnself to hustling he hustled. Having de- 
cided, in the case here under consideration, that 
energetic action was necessary, he promptly made his 
decision operative — and presently his friend Mrs, 

149 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

Mortimer was apprised, indirectly, that he had on 
hand a new venture of a speculative character by his 
request that she would lend the use of her apartment 
for, and herself would preside at, a little supper that 
he wished to give to Mr. George A. Wybird, of 
Santa Fe; a gentleman with whom, he explained, he 
was interested in the development of a mine. 

Mrs. Mortimer was accustomed to receiving from 
the Colonel requests of this nature, and her habit 
was to grant them with alacrity — experience having 
taught her that in gracing his cordial social gather- 
ings with the charm of her presence she rarely failed 
to receive, either immediately or ultimately, as much 
pleasure as she gave. In fact, aside from the cheer 
to be derived from his own buoyant society, the 
Colonel's little parties were apt to open for her the 
way to opportunities which her own complaisant 
and genial temperament enabled her substantially to 
improve. For the Colonel, being a sound political 
economist, faced squarely in small matters — with a 
view to its eventual evasion in large ones — the law 
that something cannot be had for nothing; and, 
therefore, in the preliminary stages of his various 
enterprises he always made a point of dividing hand- 
somely with those who lent him a helping hand. 
Nor was he indisposed to assist, in his turn, any little 
profitable side-issues which his helpful friends might 
develop in their own personal interests from his 
broadly philanthropic schemes. Indeed, he had 
repeatedly placed Mrs. Mortimer in a position to 
work with him, but from a different facing, pay- 
3treak§ of ^n exceptional richness j most notably, 

150 



COLONEL WITHERSBY'S '^STRIKE" 

perhaps, in the case of the charming acquaintance 
which she had formed under his auspices with the 
Colombian Minister during the negotiation for the 
concession — that she was largely helpful in obtaining 
— for the tramways company in Bogota. 

Having in mind the several benefits conferred 
upon her in the past, and also having a nature most 
amiably pliable, this obliging lady did not demand 
any exhaustive exposition of Mr. Wybird's social 
standing, in Santa Fe or elsewhere, before express- 
ing her willingness to be a partaker with him of the 
Colonel's hospitality. But the Colonel himself, with 
a nice sense of the proprieties of the situation, volun- 
teered the information for which she was too polite 
to ask. 

"Wybird comes from New Mexico," he explained, 
"and he's been roughing it out there for a good 
while, and of course he's pretty wild and woolly. 
But, all the same, he's a high-toned gentleman from 
his hat to his boots. He takes care of himself, Wy- 
bird does, and you needn't worry about him at 
supper. He'll only get sociably drunk. He says 
that in ladies' society that's as far as he ever goes. 
You see, for all his wildness and woolliness, he slings 
a certain amount of style." 

Probably some of the Colonel's acquaintances 
known to Mrs. Mortimer did not assay quite so 
high a percentage of stylish sobriety. Certainly there 
was a suggestion of relief in her tone as she an- 
swered: "Well, I'm glad he's that kind." And 
then, with an evidently genuine interest, she asked 
for information in regard to the mining venture in 

151 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

which Colonel Withersby and Mr. Wybird were 
engaged. 

"It's gold dollars. It's a dead sure thing from 
the word go," the Colonel answered confidently. 
"Of course I don't suppose," he continued with 
frankness, "the mine, as a mine, is worth a tinker's 
d — n. But it's a property to gamble on. Wybird 
has his story about it down so fine, and talks so 
dead in earnest, that at first I pretty near believed 
in it myself — and if he can make me see anything 
but a fake in The Laughing Girl I guess the shares 
ought to just walk out into the street and sell 'em- 
selves ! 

"It was Wybird struck out that name," the Col- 
onel continued, "and it's a dandy. He's not woolly 
all over, Wybird isn't, and whoever picks him up 
for a chump is likely to wish he hadn't. What he 
don't know about practical mining — from grub- 
staking and claim-jumping smack along to setting 
up pumps and stamps — I guess isn't worth talking 
about; but when it comes to the business racket 
he owns he's as green as a cottonwood shoot and 
can't get along without me to show him how it's 
done. This is his first shot at trying to stock a mine 
East, and I have to put him up to every move in 
the game. He was all knocked out when I showed 
him how to work the incorporation — ^with our two 
boys here, the darkey Telesforo and Leon, and a 
straight-out bogus, to be incorporators with him 
and me. I wanted to put him in for President, but 
he was too modest. He said that was my berth, 
as I was to run things, and he'd try his hand at being 

152 



COLONEL WITHERSBY'S '^STRIKE" 

Secretary and Treasurer if Fd give him points as we 
went along. Yes, he's green; but his greenness 
won't do any harm — for to hear him going on about 
that mine you'd really think he thought the silver 
he talks about was there. He's simply immense in 
his talk. If I could only mail copies of him around 
for a prospectus we'd sell all the shares and get 'em 
at a premium inside of two days. You remember 
the Dry Butte Irrigation and Water Power Com- 
pany, don't you?" 

"The one that got you into trouble with the 
bank-note company about printing the shares?" 

"Yes, When they wouldn't deliver the certifi- 
cates until I'd paid for printing 'em — and they 
knew blank well I couldn't pay for 'em until I'd 
begun to sell 'em — and then tried to get the screws 
on me by raking up that old Vacuum Valve Com- 
pany matter, and made things so hot that I had to 
skip out for Canada till I could settle. Well, there 
wasn't much in that irrigation scheme, for a fact. 
There wasn't any water worth speaking of to bring 
to Dry Butte, and there was only lava-beds to irri- 
gate when you got it there; and the sawmill was 
a pure fake, for sage-brush and cottonwoods was all 
there was of timber within a hundred miles. But I 
do believe — and that's what made me think of it — 
if I'd had Wybird with me in that gamble we'd have 
made it go. He looks so plumb serious and truthful 
when he's talking to you he'd make you believe 
your arms was in the legs of your pants." 

As it was obvious that the Colonel's concluding 
words could be addressed to Mrs. Mortimer only 

153 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

in an impersonal and general sense, she made no 
comment upon them but reverted to the subject in 
chief. 

"Is there anything, that is anything in particular, 
that you think may come out of the supper?" she 
asked. 

"Well, it's only that maybe socially that way — 
with a little something to drink, the genial influ- 
ence of lovely woman, and that sort of thing, 
you know — I can get Wybird ofF his high horse 
and down to the hard-pan. It's just blank nonsense 
his trying to come his all-on-the-square racket with 
me. We're in this thing together, and I want him 
to talk out and let me know where I'm to stand on 
the divide. But every time I try to get things 
settled he puts on his honest look and talks about 
my having a third of the shares, and makes out that 
I'm to hold 'em and take my pay out of what he 
calls *the legitimate profits accruing from the mine.' 
It's baby-talk, that is. If I show him how to float 
his enterprise it's got to be fixed solid that we're to 
make an even divide of all we clear in cash. And 
what's more, I won't stand much more fooling 
about it. Either he's got to come to time short off", 
or I'll drop the whole business and try another deal. 
That's what this supper's for, and that's what he's 
got to do — so now you know how to play your hand." 
And the Colonel concluded his deliverance by im- 
posing his personal malediction upon what he 
termed such baby-foolishness as third interests and 
legitimate profits ; and emphasized his opinions by 
a brief commiseration service of exceeding scorn. 

154 



COLONEL WITHERSBY'S '^STRIKE'' 



III 

The suppers over which Colonel Withersby and 
Mrs. Mortimer jointly presided rarely failed to go 
blithely; and, as Mr. Wybird proved to be an 
agreeably gay companion, this particular supper 
rattled along with a fine show of cordial cheer. 
Moreover, according to the Colonel's thinking, it 
was so successful in a business way that at its con- 
clusion he believed his strike to be as good as made. 

In a lady-like fashion Mrs. Mortimer also found 
pleasure in the little festival; but hers was a cau- 
tious temperament, and her faith in the outcome of 
the business arrangements was a trifle less assured. 
The fact should be added, however, that adventi- 
tious circumstances contributed to induce this di- 
versity of view. Colonel Withersby's own stand- 
ards of sobriety, either in or out of ladies' society, 
were much less exigent than those which he had 
ascribed to his guest from Santa Fe; and because 
of his adherence to them he did not observe that 
Mr. Wybird came through the ordeal of the supper- 
party without attaining the condition of sociable 
intoxication which had been predicted for him — 
and which actually was attained, to state the case 
moderately, by the Colonel himself. But Mrs. Mor- 
timer — ^who observed more clearly, because through 
a less vinous atmosphere — did perceive this phe- 
nomenon, and found it both interesting and ominous. 

The plan for dealing with The Laughing Girl which 
Mr. Wybird had outhned amidst these mellowing 

155 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

surroundings was such that Colonel Withersby — 
though himself accustomed to inventing boldly 
original methods for deriving profits from mining 
enterprises — ^was filled with admiration and sur- 
prise. 

"You know, Withersby," he said with a friendly 
familiarity — it was at the second bird and third 
bottle stage of the supper, and the Colonel's generous 
nature was expanding with a large benevolence; 
"you know the ordinary racket in working a fake 
mine is just to boom it and then unload — get out a 
little before the smash with as much as you can 
grab." 

"And it's not a bad way, either," put in the 
Colonel, "provided you can make it go." There was 
a ring of sincerity in his tone, as though — and such 
really was the case — he had had an extended ac- 
quaintance with this method both as a failure and as 
a success. 

"But when," continued Mr. Wybird, "your mine 
isn't a fake, but a sure thing like The Laughing Girl, 
that isn't the best way." 

Had Colonel Withersby been in a less benevolent 
mood this fresh insistence upon the substantial value 
of The Laughing Girl would have irritated him. As 
the case stood, however, he merely winked at Mr. 
Wybird; and broke into a gently gurgling chuckle as 
that gentleman winked back at him and continued: 

"No sir, that's not the way to play the game when 
you've got a sure thing. The smash is all right, and 
we'll have a good one; but we won't do any unloading 
before it comes, and after it's over, and everything's 

156 



COLONEL WITHERSBY'S ''STRIKE" 

lying around flat on the ground, we'll buy in the 
stock at about two cents on the dollar and take a 
fresh start. Do you catch on?" 

Obviously, the Colonel did not catch on. This 
fact was made evident by his expression of wrathful 
astonishment, and also was presented verbally in his 
terse (and possibly prophetic) statement of the lurid 
fate which, if he did, would be his. 

"Not unload before, and buy in the stock after 
the smash!" he murmured faintly. And he was so 
overcome by the enormity of Mr. Wybird's dual 
suggestion that his trembling hand almost refused its 
office as he sought reinvigoration by hastily filling and 
emptying his glass. 

''And where the Hebrides," he demanded, being 
thus strengthened, " do we come in ? You're drunk, 
Wybird, that's what's the matter with you. You're 
drunk as a boiled owl!" 

"Where we come in," Mr. Wybird answered, with 
a calm precision which sufficiently refuted the 
Colonel's rudely sweeping charge, is on the reorgan- 
ization. If you'll think for half a minute. Colonel, 
you'll see yourself what I mean. It's this way: I've 
got what I know to be the best piece of undeveloped 
mining property in New Mexico. The mill-run 
value of the outcrop is twenty dollars. A section of 
the vein, ten feet in, assayed forty dollars. As it 
goes in, the vein thickens. We're within less than 
seven miles of the railroad, and with such an easy 
water-grade from the track to the mine that the 
stamps and boilers '11 almost carry each other in. 
Close around the claim there's all the timber we 

157 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

need for shedding and firewood, and a lot to spare. 
With a forty-foot dam in the canon of the Chama 
we'll have a storage supply of more water than we 
can use all the year round. There's a bed of clay — " 

"Oh come off!" struck in the Colonel in a tone of 
weariness. This isn't any place for fooling with 
prospectusses. Mrs. Mortimer's nobody's lamb, and 
I'm not either. What I want to know is what my 
whack's to be when we market the shares — s'posin', 
that is, we don't spend all our lives in this sort of 
fool-talk and do market 'em; and then s'posin' we 
don't get drunk enough to work your fool racket of 
buyin' 'em back again after the mine's gone to 
everlastin' smash. You make me tired, Wybird. 
Talk sense, if you're sober enough to talk sense; an' 
if you're not" — here the Colonel hiccoughed — 
"wa-wait till y' are!" 

"In short," continued Mr. Wybird, not in the 
least ruffled by the reflections cast upon his sense 
and his sobriety, "the cost of developing The 
Laughing Girl will be next to nothing, and as soon as 
she's developed she'll give me all the money I want. 
But what cinches me is that I haven't the spot cash 
to develop her. I've got to make a raise big enough 
to start her up, and that means that I've got to 
market a good third of the shares — and then, when 
we get to work, I'll only get a third of what we clean 
up from the stamps. I want it all — that is, you and 
I together want it all; and what's more we're going 
to get it. My plan's the simplest thing you ever 
saw. We'll market the shares, but instead of 
developing the property — " 

158 



COLONEL WITHERSBY'S ^'STRIKE" 

"We'll hang on to the money and divide/' struck 
in the Colonel with a jovial chuckle. **Now you're 
talkin' out square at last!" 

"Instead of developing the property," repeated 
Mr. Wybird calmly, "we'll let the smash come right 
on. The shares '11 go down to nothing, and every- 
body '11 curse us the worst kind." 

"So they will! So they will!" the Colonel as- 
sented, still chuckling. "I've been there myself, 
Wybird — but I don't mind getting there on a cash 
basis a few times more." 

" But you haven't been there in quite my way," 
said Mr. Wybird. "It's just at this point that my 
plan begins. I've kept, you understand, one third 
of the stock as representing my transfer to the Com- 
pany of the claim; and you figure on the books as 
owning another third by purchase. Now at a capi- 
talization of ^200,000, with sales at, say, thirty and 
all expenses charged off, we'll pull out from the third 
we sell a clear ^25,000. That '11 be enough, if we 
work close, to open the mine. Very good. Then 
we'll have the smash; and as soon as we've got most 
of the shares back in our own hands we'll reorganize 
and come the high-toned honesty racket — issue a 
card over our own names saying we've believed in 
the mine from the start and believe in it still; that 
we've acted throughout in absolute good faith, and 
that to prove it we're ready to buy at par all the 
stock that's offered to us. That card will fetch 
The Laughing Girl up again with such a bounce that 
it won't be human nature if the few outsiders we've 
left with holdings '11 want to sell. They'll believe 

159 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

in the mine then for dead sure, and '11 hang on for 
dividends or a bigger rise. While they're waiting 
they'll do just the kind of talking we want. What's 
more, we'll give 'em something to talk about. A 
little before we make the smash you shall go out 
to the mine, and come back East right after the 
reorganization with a confidence-restoring report. 
Everybody knows you, Colonel, for a mining ex- 
pert, and a report over your signature '11 carry con- 
viction on its face. And then we'll sail in on a sec- 
ond boom. You can sell out for good then if you 
want to. I'll hold on — and you'd better hold on 
with me — and work the mine. But whichever way 
you go there's big money to be made: two sets 
of profits from share-emission, or all the working 
capital we need for nothing and big dividends 
from production to tie to in the end. And the 
point of the whole thing is that we'll be abso- 
lutely solid in case anybody tries to raise a row: 
for we can prove by the books and by the cer- 
tificates themselves that we've never parted with 
a dollar's worth of our holding, and we can prove 
that when the whole thing seemed to be busted we 
actually bought back all the stock that was offered 
to us at par. 

"Now that's my game — and if you can show me 
a better way to play it I'm ready for any advice 
that you've got to give." And Mr. Wybird — ^with 
the polite air of one who awaited, yet scarcely ex- 
pected, valuable counsel — leaned back in his chair 
easily and appreciatively sipped his wine. 

Even had Colonel Withersby been disposed to 

i6o 



COLONEL WITHERSBY'S "STRIKE'' 

offer advice, its value at that juncture would have 
been rather more than open to question. But for 
once in his life he recognized the fact that he was in 
the presence of a master-intellect superior to any 
advice that was his to give. The simple majesty 
of the plan thus outlined by Mr. Wybird fairly 
overawed him. The delicate flattery implied in the 
suggestion that he should make a confidence-restor- 
ing report brought refreshment and exaltation to 
his soul. Had he been trained in the customs of the 
Orient he assuredly would have manifested his re- 
spect for the presence in which he found himself by 
removing his shoes. His training having been strictly 
Occidental, he expressed his veneration in different 
but equivalent terms. Rising with some difficulty 
to his feet, and maintaining himself in an approxi- 
mately upright position by holding fast to the back 
of his chair, he uttered unsteadily but with deep 
emotion these words: "Take my hat, Wybird! 
Take it — it's yours. I guess there hasn't been a 
fly on you since the day you was born!" 



IV 

In the immediate wake of that agreeable supper- 
party the march of events was such as to strengthen 
Colonel Withersby's bravely sanguine convictions, 
and even to kindle in Mrs. Mortimer's doubting 
bosom the pure flame of hope. 

Treated by the Colonel with a florid veracity, the 
alluring possibilities of The Laughing Girl Mineral 

i6i 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

Extraction and Water-Power Company, Limited, 
were embodied in a prospectus which justified his 
assertion that it would start gold dollars on a full 
jump after the shares. The water-power part was 
his own addition to the scheme. Nothing, he said, 
took hold of investors like a sawmill — and he dem- 
onstrated by a series of simple calculations that all 
the cost of developing the mine could be covered by 
the profits accruing from getting out cross-ties for 
the railroads and from the sale of lumber for build- 
ing purposes in Pueblo and Santa Fe. 

The effectiveness of the ColoneFs glowing proph- 
ecies was sufficiently proved by the fact that, tem- 
porarily at least, they carried conviction to him- 
self. As his redundant fancy played fervently 
around Mr. Wybird's strong statements in regard 
to the positive richness of the mine, and the natural 
advantages which assured its development at a rel- 
atively trifling cost, his enthusiastic nature was 
stirred to its depths; and by the time that his 
ornate composition was ready for the printer his 
faith in The Laughing Girl was as complete as that 
which Mr. Wybird himself consistently had avowed. 

Colonel Withersby's self-conversion, it should be 
stated, was a process entirely natural and amply 
precedented. As a great many people had found 
out to their confusion and sorrow, the quality which 
made him most successful as a promoter was his ex- 
traordinary capacity for believing absolutely in any 
project whatever when once he had it fairly launched. 
On the other hand, this very strength of belief — by 
which he was enabled to make other people be- 

162 



COLONEL WITHERSBY'S ^'STRIKE" 

lieve with him — became in the crisic moments of his 
ventures his most dangerous weakness; since its 
tendency was to make him hold on when every prin- 
ciple of prudence urged him to let go. The struggle 
which at such times took place between his faith and 
his reason would have afforded to a professional 
authoress of irreligious novels a suitable and edify- 
ing theme; and the more so because his reason usual- 
ly triumphed in time to bring him out safe from the 
wreck in which were involved together his disciples 
and his creed. A philosopher studying the psychol- 
ogy of promotion would have found much to inter- 
est him in this curious double consciousness — this 
capacity for temporarily believing in his own dis- 
beliefs — ^which was characteristic of Colonel Withers- 
by's mind. 

Certainly, for the successful launching of the enter- 
prise in which he and Mr. Wybird were engaged to- 
gether, his access of faith was opportune. With an 
honest bluntness, Mr. Wybird freely admitted that 
he had no money whatever for preliminary expenses; 
and had the Colonel declined to make the initial 
outlay — cash payments being essential in such cases 
— the fortunes of The Laughing Girl Mineral Ex- 
traction and Water-Power Company, Limited, would 
have been brought up at the very outset with a round 
turn. But he did not decline. Out of his own 
pocket he paid in advance for the printing of his 
self-convincing prospectus; paid the bank-note com- 
pany in advance for the engraving and printing of 
the stock-certificates; paid in advance the first 
quarter's rent for the Company's office; and, finally, 
12 163 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

made the necessary advance payments to the Wall 
Street newspaper men for the spontaneous eulogies 
with which The Laughing Girl was introduced to 
the financial world. Thus it came to pass that the 
very first gold dollars to jump after the shares, in fulfil- 
ment of his prophecy, were his own — and were nearly 
all that remained to him of his winnings in Bogota. 

Yet the depletion of his reserve, while momentarily 
embarrassing, was far from disheartening: for The 
Laughing Girl, thanks to the drawing qualities of 
his prospectus, and to his skill in working the news- 
papers, caught the favor of the public in a way so 
in keeping with her cheery name that at the end of 
a couple of months he might have pulled out from 
the game with winnings which left his original stake 
nowhere. Naturally, under these circumstances, 
his reason asserted itself and his faith declined. 
Left to his own devices, he would have pulled out 
in a hurry; and that he did violence to his own con- 
victions by continuing to stand in was due wholly 
to Mr. Wybird's exceptional capacity for uniting 
immoral suasion with material restraint. 

In strong terms Mr. Wybird declared that if the 
Colonel failed to adhere to their programme — that 
is to say, to play on through the prearranged smash 
and reorganization to the second issue of stock — he 
would be every known variety of imprecated fool; 
and he emphasized his discourteous conclusion by 
forcibly restating the case in favor of standing by 
their plan for getting, as he tersely phrased it, two 
shearings from one flock of lambs. But in spite of 
this urgent deliverance of opinion and argument the 

164 



COLONEL WLTHERSBY'S ^'STRIKE" 

Colonel was not convinced. His spots could not be 
changed all in a moment, and had the way been open 
to him he assuredly would have closed out — with a 
studied unostentation — the script which represented 
his one-third interest, and so would have left Mr. 
Wybird to test the merits of his peculiar system 
of promotion alone. 

In point of fact, the way was not open to him. 
Of course Mr. Wybird could not have believed for 
a moment that a breach of faith on the part of so 
honorable an associate was possible; yet had he con- 
fidently anticipated such a breach he could not have 
guarded against it by any more effective means than 
those which he had employed. 

"You know, Colonel,'* he said frankly, when they 
had finished the work of signing The Laughing Girl 
stock-certificates, "there's all sorts of crookedness 
in mining deals, and unless you've made a good many 
close assays of a man you never can feel sure what 
game he'll try to come on you. Now you and I 
haven't trained together long, and we only have 
each other's word for it that we mean to play square. 
What I think we ought to do is to fix things so that 
we can't play any other way. Let's bunch our two- 
thirds of this stuff together and put it in a safe- 
deposit vault subject to our joint order. Then we'll 
each of us know that the other can't be up to any 
monkey-tricks in the way of unloading on the sly. 
And what we get from the third we sell we'll fix in 
the same way — ^jug it to our joint account in bank. 
That's a fair deal to both of us, isn't it? What do 
you say?** 

165 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

Of course, to such a proposition there was only one 
answer possible; and because he had given that an- 
swer the Colonel found his hands tied at a moment 
when he very earnestly desired that they should be 
free. His gorge rose as he recognized the restraint 
laid upon him; and his alarm still farther was ex- 
cited by the intelligence with which that restraint 
had been applied. He was oppressed by gloomy fore- 
bodings, and somewhat nervously confided to Mrs. 
Mortimer his doubts as to whether Mr. Wybird was 
quite as wild and woolly as he had at first appeared. 

"Considering that he set out by saying that he 
didn't know a blasted thing about business," said 
the Colonel, in an injured tone, "he's caught on 
altogether too blank fast. I'm not running things — 
he's running 'em himself, and I'm not in it. He's 
got a cinch on me now that's making me squirm. 
I don't want to hold on, and he won't let me let go. 
I've got to play the game through his way, or pull out 
dead busted — ^with nothing to show for the money 
I put up but a black eye. To think of my getting 
into a hole like this! I guess the best thing I can 
do with myself is to kick myself oflF the Battery for 
a fat-eyed fool!" And the Colonel filled his glass 
wearily, and emptied it with a heavy sigh. 

When a strong man is overcome by doubt and sor- 
row 'tis the part of lovely woman to hearten and 
console. Colonel Withersby, however, did not ex- 
pect a great deal in this line from Mrs. Mortimer — 
who, having much in common with Cassandra, was 
less to be depended upon as an administratrix of 
consolation than of chillingly cautionary advice or 

1 66 



COLONEL WITHERSBY'S '^STRIKE" 

reproof. Therefore was he surprised, and also com- 
forted, when she nourished with a Hvely optimism 
his waning hope. In strong terms she avowed her 
faith in Mr. Wybird's methods, and urged him to 
conform to them; and she fortified practically her 
declaration of opinion by the statement that she had 
no intention of selling her own ten shares of Laugh- 
ing Girl — the little block of stock with which, early 
in the enterprise, Mr. Wybird had endowed her in 
consideration of her playful promise to be the mas- 
cotte of the mine. 

Possibly the Colonel's surprise would have been 
increased, certainly his comfort would have been 
diminished, had he known that in the concluding 
clause of the lady's utterance the quality of truth- 
fulness was a little strained. Her declaration that 
she did not intend to sell her shares was precise to 
the letter, but it left something in the way of spiritual 
precision to be desired — inasmuch as, a day or two 
earlier, after a confidential interview with Mr. Wy- 
bird in which the necessity had been canvassed of 
bracing up the Colonel's waning faith, that woolly 
gentleman had bought them back from her at par. 
The primary reason, therefore, why she did not in- 
tend to sell her stock was that it already was sold. 

Although momentarily heartened by Mrs. Mor- 
timer's disinterested words of cheer, the Colonel 
continued to find most galling the strain put upon 
him by adherence to Mr. Wybird's plan; and the 
strain grew tenser as the moment approached when 
the smash was to be precipitated, with its sequent 
issue of the high-toned honesty card to the stock- 

167 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

holders and the buying-in of the depreciated se- 
curities: a monstrous method of procedure against 
which every conviction derived from his long ex- 
perience with bottomless corporations rose in tumul- 
tuous revolt. Indeed, he was thankful when the 
time came for him to get out of it all by going 
to New Mexico to prepare his confidence-restoring 
report — although for the making of that gayly im- 
aginative instrument he was in a most unfit mood. 
A sullen rage possessed him, and he was the prey to 
a melancholy beyond the power of alcoholic stimulus 
to relieve: for even cocktails fail of their cheerful 
function in the case of a man who believes firmly 
that Fate is haling him at a gallop into the passes 
of despair. 



If a bird of the air may be a disseminator of in- 
telligence, much more so may be the "runner" for 
a hotel. The runner for the Casa Napoleon, one 
Pedro Salazar — ^whose duty it was to board steam- 
ers arriving from Spanish-American and West- 
Indian ports to solicit patronage for the establish- 
ment — was a thin old Cuban who had seen better 
days. Worse days he scarcely could expect than 
those upon which he had fallen. Bitter words were 
his portion from Madame when he came back from 
the docks patronless; bitter words often were his 
portion from the patrons whom he secured, on the 
ground that through his misrepresentations their 
patronage had been ill-bestowed; and between 

i68 



COLONEL WITHERSBY'S ''STRIKE" 

whiles his soul was wounded by the way in which 
the American frequenters of the restaurant called 
him "Pete," and ordered him to serve them pre- 
cisely as they ordered the Cuban negro Telesforo — 
for whom, having himself owned blacks in his day, 
he had a proper scorn. 

For Colonel Withersby this fallen gentleman had 
a warmly friendly feeling, the Colonel being one 
of the very few persons of his dingy acquaintance 
who treated him with the consideration to which 
he had been accustomed in his better times. When 
his spirit had been ruffled by the contemptuous 
liberties taken with his name, and by brusquely 
delivered orders, and by trifling gifts of silver coin, 
he found a soothing solace in being addressed by the 
Colonel as Don Pedro or Senor Salazar and invited 
as an equal to take a cocktail; and still more kind- 
ling to the sad embers of his self-esteem — since thus 
he was enabled to confer a favor, not to receive one 
— was the Colonel's occasional subtly flattering re- 
quest for a cigar. 

Various motives, of which no doubt benevolence 
was one, prompted the Colonel's handsome con- 
duct. He was glad to keep in practice the useful 
forms of Spanish courtesy which he had acquired 
among Spanish Americans while promoting various 
projects presumptively for their benefit and un- 
deniably for his own; he was glad to smoke Don 
Pedro's cigars which, being picked up aboard in- 
coming steamers, were well worth having at the cost 
of a few civil words; and he was glad to have the 
information — also picked up aboard incoming steam- 

169 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

ers — which Don Pedro frequently gave him con- 
cerning the guests arriving at the Casa from the 
Islands or from the Spanish Main: for this infor- 
mation was apt to be valuable both to the oncoming 
strangers and to himself; that is to say, valuable to 
the Colonel substantially, and to the strangers in 
that, through his possession and considerate use of 
it, their store of worldly wisdom often was materi- 
ally enlarged. But the Colonel wasted no time upon 
analysis of his motives. He was content to cheer 
Don Pedro with courtesy and cocktails, and to leave 
to the accusing buyers to settle before Heaven's 
high chancery how much of his affability should be 
set down to self-interest and how much to pure 
kindness of heart. 

It was over a noon cocktail, on the day of his in- 
tended departure for New Mexico, that the Colonel 
informed Don Pedro of the journey that he was 
about to take; and incidentally added the farther 
information that during his absence Mr. Wybird 
would have charge of the affairs of The Laughing 
Girl. 

"But the Seiior Viburdo himself departs to-day 
upon a journey," commented Don Pedro. 

"No, Senor, he remains in New York." 

"But it is for himself that he has bought the pas- 
sage." 

"Bought a passage for where .f^ What the dickens 
are you talking about .f* Shake yourself, old man — 
you're oflP your head!" In the interest excited by 
this curious statement the Colonel dropped out of 
his elegant Spanish into his vernacular, in which 

170 



COLONEL WITHERSBY'S ''STRIKE" 

elegance was not always the quality most sharply 
marked. 

"It is true, Seiior," Don Pedro answered. "Yes- 
terday, on the dock of the Hne for the Isthmus, I 
heard the Senor Viburdo making his inquiries in 
regard to the hour at which the Comal would depart 
to-day; and he assuredly spoke of himself as the pas- 
senger who was to go. It was not a matter that con- 
cerned me. I did not pay close attention to his 
words. But I am confident that I make no mistake. 
It was his desire, he explained, to escape the annoy- 
ance of the crowd by going on board some hours 
before the ship started; and the matter was so ar- 
ranged. The Comal sails at three o'clock this after- 
noon." 

Colonel Withersby's mental processes were rapid. 
On the instant that he received this precise informa- 
tion his concept of its meaning crystallized into the 
conviction that Mr. Wybird was running away. 
Whereupon, raging, he gave vent to sulphurous 
speech and dashed his empty glass — even in his rage 
he would not thus have treated a full one — ^w^th 
great violence upon the floor. 

Although accustomed to West-Indian hurricanes, 
Sefior Salazar was not less startled by the sudden- 
ness of this lurid outburst than surprised by the in- 
stantly ensuing calm — as the Colonel, having freed 
his mind, promptly bent the full force of his energies 
to countervailing a situation in which he believed 
his peril to be extreme. With a quiet direction to 
the barkeeper to charge the broken glass to his ac- 
count, he led the way into the smoking-room — just 

171 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

then deserted — and said in quiet tones: **My friend, 
this is a matter of much importance, and one in 
which I must ask for your help. I beg that you will 
go at once to the dock and ascertain for me the num- 
ber of the state-room which the Senor Wybird occu- 
pies. Your inquiries must be made guardedly, in 
a way that will not excite curiosity. For that I rely 
upon your excellent discretion; and I entrust the 
affair to you, Senor, because my own appearance in 
it would be unwise. Moreover, there is another and 
even more important duty to which I instantly must 
attend." And dropping from Spanish into English 
the Colonel added: "Hustle for all you're worth, 
Don Pedro! Scoot down to the dock and back here 
again as if Apaches were after you. This thing's 
hell and high water broken loose together, and we've 
got to work fast!" 

Probably Seiior Salazar did not perfectly under- 
stand this terse concluding metaphor. But he did 
understand that extreme haste was necessary. In 
a moment he was off. 

Not less rapid were the Colonel's own motions. 
He did not doubt that Mr. Wybird was endeavoring 
to get away with all the cash so far obtained from 
the stock of The Laughing Girl. As he reflected, 
half a forgery — that is to say, a cheque on which 
only one of the signatures was forged — ^would have 
put at his friend's disposition the funds deposited 
to their joint account in bank. But the same 
process would have released from the safe-deposit 
vaults, and so would have enabled Mr. Wybird to 
sell, the reserved two-thirds of the certificates; and 

172 



COLONEL WITHERSBY'S '^STRIKE" 

if that had been his game, as seemed probable, the 
Colonel saw his own way clearly to a line of action 
that would bring him out of a doubtful situation 
not only with flying colors but with very substantial 
gains. 

The occasion was not one for mincing matters. 
Time pressed. To obtain quickly the necessary in- 
formation in regard to the certificates there was just 
one way; and the Colonel — ^whose skill as a penman 
also was considerable, and whose disposition was 
not to stick at trifles when important issues were at 
stake — took that way. 

In something less than sixty minutes after his 
interview with Senor Salazar, he presented at the 
desk of the safe-deposit company an order for ad- 
mission to the vaults to which duly was appended 
Mr. Wybird's signature together with his own. 
Within five minutes more he stood before the open 
drawer in which should have been the certificates — 
and found it, as he had expected to find it, as bare 
as the palm of his hand. 

VI 

Reference already has been made to the fact that, 
when hustling was necessary. Colonel Withersby 
was a person who hustled. The fibre of his sturdy 
nature was of the sort that stiff'ens when dangers 
menace, and his strong soul ever was ready to try 
conclusions with Fate. Nor was he often hampered 
(as has just been shown) by the requirements of 
convention when the need arose for bringing Fate 

173 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

shortly to terms. His habit was to go at such 
exigent situations horns down. 

From the exigent situation created by Mr. Wy- 
bird's irregular actions all traces of conventionality 
already had been removed: in the first instance by 
that gentleman's method of obtaining the certifi- 
cates — and also, presumably, of closing the joint 
bank-account; and in the second by the detective 
process which the Colonel himself had employed. 
A reversion to ordinary legal usages, therefore, was 
as impracticable as it was undesirable: for the 
Colonel knew very well that to proceed in a regular 
way, by arresting Mr. Wybird and bringing him be- 
fore the courts, would be to bring also before the 
courts the eccentric affairs of The Laughing Girl — 
and that simply would be to plump all the fat at 
once into the fire. And so, with his customary vigor, 
he took the law into his own hands — and applied it 
with such celerity that by a little after two o'clock 
his cab was rattling down Canal Street to the dock 
of the Pacific Mail. But his haste was not precipita- 
tion. On his way to the dock he had obtained from 
Senor Salazar the number of Mr. Wybird's state- 
room. Also, he had purchased a large and strong 
valise. He knew precisely what he meant to do, 
and how he meant to do it — this resolute gentleman 
whose head was quite refreshingly cool. 

As he walked up the gang-plank, clouds of black 
smoke were pouring from the funnel of the Comal; 
at intervals her wheel made a half- turn; from her 
exhaust-pipes came the hiss of escaping steam. Evi- 
dently, there was not much time to lose. That 

174 



COLONEL WITHERSBY'S ^^STRIKE" 

there might not be enough time left for his purposes, 
and that he might be compelled to take a voyage to 
the tropics, struck him as an imminent possibility. 
He gritted his teeth as this thought presented itself 
— but resolutely, and with the unuttered reflection 
that, if necessary, he would go on a voyage to a 
region quite super-tropical in order to bring Mr. 
Wybird to terms. 

His knock at the door of state-room 73 elicited 
no response, and his trial of the knob showed that 
the door was locked. That Mr. Wybird should be 
coy, under the circumstances, was only natural; 
and as the Colonel had no desire to use force he re- 
sorted to persuasion. 

"I have a policeman on the dock," he said, speak- 
ing very distinctly but in guardedly low tones, "but 
he needn't come on board unless you want him. 
We can make our deal on the quiet, if you'll open the 
door right away." 

There was a slight sound of movement within, 
but the door remained closed. 

"There's not much time, you know," he continued. 
"I can give you only half a minute — and I've got 
my watch in my hand." 

For twenty seconds there was a strained silence. 
Then the bolt shot back and the door opened. Mr. 
Wybird was standing inside with a revolver in his 
hand. On his face, however, was an irresolute ex- 
pression not at all in keeping with his display of this 
deadly weapon. In fact, his look suggested that he 
was scared. 

"Oh, come off with your gun," said the Colonel 

175 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

cheerfully, at the same time good-naturedly waving 
the revolver aside and then setting down his valise 
and closing and locking the door. "You're young, 
Wybird, and fresh — very fresh. You'd smash the 
whole business, you know, if you went to shooting 
here. It's because you are so young and so fresh, 
I suppose, that you've tried to work this thing in 
this perfectly fool way. Just didn't know any bet- 
ter — because you was so green! But I'm not the 
kind to be hard on a tenderfoot; and even if you 
have put me to a little extra trouble I'll forgive 
your monkey-tricks and we'll settle on the square 
just the same." 

It is unlikely that Mr. Wybird had been cut out 
for a hero. If he had, he was a misfit. He half 
raised his pistol — and instantly dropped it again 
as he observed the Colonel's kindly but dissuad- 
ing smile. He glanced toward the door; but it 
was locked, and against it was the Colonel's 
back. "Well," he said weakly, "what do you 
want?" 

"What I want," the Colonel answered, "is my 
share. You're a hog, Wybird. You're the worst 
hog I ever laid eyes on — trying to work this racket 
that 'd disgrace an Apache. But there's no hog 
about me, and all I'm after is a square divide. 
And you can bet your life I'm going to have 
it. For I tell you what I am — and it's some- 
thing you never were and never will be — I'm a 
Man!" 

There was such earnestness in Colonel Withers- 
by's deliverance, and his resolute air was so in keep- 

176 



COLONEL WITHERSBY'S "STRIKE" 

ing with his words, that Mr. Wybird's misfit heroism 
still farther oozed away. 

"The thing stands this way," the Colonel con- 
tinued. "YouVe grabbed all there is to clean up 
from The Laughing Girl, and you have it right here 
in gold. I'm after my half. When I've got it you 
can clear out with the rest — like the fresh fool that 
you are." 

"But suppose I haven't it here," Mr. Wybird in- 
terpolated. 

"You mean," corrected the Colonel, "suppose 
you refuse to divide. But you will. Fm here to 
make you." And then, in amiably expository tones, 
he added: "Don't you see that I'm giving you a 
handsome show? I'm not doing it because I love 
you, but because I want to take care of myself. I've 
only to step to the side of the steamer and call up 
the policeman I have waiting on the dock — and 
you'll lose your whole stake and go to jug besides. 
Very likely I'd lose my stake too; but I'd be no 
worse off that way than if I let you get away with 
what you've corralled. It's half or nothing for both 
of us, and you've got to make up your mind in a 
hurry whether you mean to save your half, and your- 
self from jug, by dividing right here. I sized you 
up at the start, Wybird, for a woolly chump, and I 
must say that you're about the blastedest woolliest 
chump that ever was; but even you ought to see 
that there's only one thing under heaven for you to 
do. Now be quick — is it, or isn't it, a go?" 

And Mr. Wybird, yielding to the logic of the situ- 
ation, replied that it was a go. 

177 



AT THE CASA NAPOLEON 

Five minutes before the Comal started upon her 
voyage for the Isthmus Colonel Withersby came 
down the gang-plank. He carried a large valise 
that evidently was of great weight. Mr. Wybird, 
whose face was quite pale and drawn, leaned over 
the rail watching him. Having reached the dock, 
the Colonel set down his heavy load and turned 
around. He was the last man to leave the ship. 
A moment later the gang-plank was swung down; 
and then the quarter-rail was set in place, the haw- 
sers were cast loose, and a quiver ran through the 
vessel as her wheel began to turn. 

"Well, so long, old man!" the Colonel called 
cheerfully, but Mr. Wybird did not reply. The 
Colonel continued to smile — standing easily, with 
one foot on the heavy valise — as the Comal very 
slowly began to move. "And about that policeman, 
you know," he added in a friendly tone, while his 
smile broadened, "he was just a bluff. Take care 
of yourself down there — and be sure to wear thick 
shoes. You need 'em. I don't believe your feet 
ever '11 get what you really can call hard." 

Mr. Wybird's face did not wear an agreeable ex- 
pression as this parting information and advice was 
presented to him. But genial benevolence fairly radi- 
ated from all portions of the Colonel's person as he 
gave it — ^while the Comal slid out into the river and 
began her voyage downward to the far regions of 
the southern sea. 

It had been a close call for the Colonel — but his 
strike was made! 



178 



COLONEL WITHERSBY'S ''STRIKE'^ 



VII 

For once in his chequered career, Colonel Withers- 
by was enabled to retire from an incorporated catas- 
trophe in a manner that left him stainless before the 
world. This was not the result of accident, but of 
skilful play: by which he instantly had perceived 
Mr. Wybird's tactical blunder, and had taken ad- 
vantage of it to make a full-freighted scapegoat of 
him — although he actually carried into the wilder- 
ness only half a load. 

However, nobody but his consignor knew that the 
scapegoat went out light; and the Colonel, there- 
fore, was in a position to, and did, pose with great 
dignity as a victim of misplaced confidence; and 
he did it so well that much of his success in float- 
ing his next venture — ^The South-Eastern Colorado 
Ditch and Milling Company, Limited — was due to 
the sympathy excited by his undeniable assertion 
that he was the heaviest individual loser by the de- 
falcation and flight of the treasurer of The Laughing 
Girl. 

By a curious coincidence, Mrs. Mortimer adopted 
toward the Colonel a line of policy that practically 
was identical with his own toward the investing 
public. She also posed as a victim, and she also did 
it very well. Adding a little to the load which Mr. 
Wybird carried in his capacity of scapegoat, she 
declared that he had induced her to return to him 
her block of mascotte stock only a week before he 
perfidiously sailed away. This statement, while 
13 179 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

exact, was incomplete, as she neglected to add that 
he had paid her for it. But it was sufficiently com- 
plete for her purposes. For the Colonel — failing to 
follow the thread of her delicately discriminating 
veracity, and warm with a generous desire to share 
his good fortune with his friends — instantly made 
good her supposititious loss. Thus, to some extent, 
were the eternal balances preserved. 



MONSIEUR LE DOCTEUR THEOPHILE 




S the result of what all three of them 
— that is to say, Madame, Don Ana- 
stasio, and Dr. Theophile himself 
— came in time to believe was a di- 
rect interposition of Providence, Dr. 
Theophile ate the very first dinner 
that ever was cooked and served in the Casa Na- 
poleon. By this statement I do not mean to imply, 
of course, that Dr. Theophile ate the whole of that 
memorable dinner — he being a lean man, and tem- 
perate — but such portions of it as were served in 
the ordinary manner to the ordinary diner at the 
ordinary charge of half a dollar — ^'vin et cafe com- 
pris" 

For Dr. Theophile — only, at that time, he had not 
achieved his doctorate — it was a dinner which 
marked the beginning in his life of a new epoch, and 
the seasoning of it was rare: for to his sanguine taste 
the pepper of it was Ambition, and the salt of it was 
Hope! That very afternoon he had landed in New 
York: come thither from his native island of Guade- 
loupe to begin the studies which were to make him, 

i8i 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

as he believed confidently, one of the great physi- 
cians of the world. His future seemed to him as vast 
as the Continent upon which for the first time his 
feet rested, and as brilliant as the glowing colors of 
the sunset which blazed in the western heavens above 
the Jersey hills. His own soul was brighter than the 
sunset, and there seemed to be no limit to the glad 
swelling of his heart. And all this was reasonable 
and natural: for he was just one-and-twenty; and 
his foot was on the first round of Fame's ladder — 
and he was in love! 

As to his coming to the Casa Napoleon, it seemed 
to be — until the Providential interposition theory 
was evolved later — the result of a mere whiff of 
chance: due to his turning to the left, instead of 
turning to the right, when he set forth from his 
lodgings in Macdougal Street (to which a fellow- 
passenger on the steamer had directed him) to 
stroll in the maze of that new strange city in 
the sunset glow. But there was nothing of chance 
in his entering the Casa Napoleon when his 
wanderings brought him to its hospitably open 
doorway. Out from that doorway came smells 
that to a man wanting a dinner were irresistible; 
and almost as tempting, to Dr. Th ophile, was the 
bilingual sign above it — brave with brand - new 
gilding — ^which gave promise that he might hold 
converse with those within in either of the two 
languages in which he was entirely at home — and 
so be spared from painful tamperings with the Eng- 
lish tongue. Only a week before, in Guadeloupe, 
he had been very proud of his English. For a year 

182 



DOCTEUR THfiOPHILE 

he had toiled to acquire it; and had toiled gladly, 
because it was the necessary foundation-stone of 
the studies in medicine which were to bring him 
fame. But his first three hours of practical experi- 
ence had convinced him, dissatisfyingly, that the 
English that he had learned in Guadeloupe was not 
by any means the English that was spoken in New . 
York. Therefore the gilded word "Casa," in con- 
junction with the properly accented gilded name 
"Napoleon," made up a golden legend which in- 
stantly enticed him — even as Don Anastasio astutely 
had designed that those words should entice Spanish 
and French wayfarers carrying little baggage of 
English speech — to enter and to be at ease. 

Being the first stranger to cross the threshold of 
that new-founded hostelry, and being — as was pro- 
claimed by his trig short frock-coat worn jauntily, 
and by his highly tropical panama hat — precisely 
the sort of stranger who was awaited there eagerly, 
his welcome was of the warmest: for Madame, with 
the hopeful eyes of Toulouse, and Don Anastasio, 
with the keen eyes of Mexico, saw in him something 
very like a herald angel — the leader of a magnificent 
procession of patrons, ever increasing as the pros- 
perous years rolled onward, which would make Don 
Anastasio's investment of Mexican silver dollars 
(saved from the wreck of the revolution that had 
whirled him out of that volcanic Republic) increase 
until it became a good deal more than a tidy fortune, 
and which would send the glories of Madame's 
Toulousian cooking ringing about the hemispheres 
through the trumpet of Fame. 

183 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

In ten minutes — such is the cordial way with the 
Latin races — the three were old friends together. 
Speaking in sonorous Spanish, Don Anastasio des- 
canted upon the honorable ambition which he and 
Madame cherished to make the Casa Napoleon the 
very first of the second-class hotels of the civilized 
world, and quoted appositely the ninety-seventh 
law of the First Partida of Alonzo the Wise, King 
of Castile in the thirteenth century. 

Speaking in the softened French of the Midi, 
Madame endorsed Don Anastasio's application of the 
ancient theories of the Wise Alonzo to the modern 
practice of hotel-keeping — but with some enlarging 
reservations. For Madame — having been born but 
the width of a river and a mountain chain away from 
Gascony — ^was of a nobly sanguine temperament and 
had no notion of confusing the future of the Casa 
Napoleon to a mere succession of days of small 
things. That was well enough for a beginning, she 
said; but intimated that at the end of the bright 
vista down which she gazed with more than a mere 
optical optimism there rose a castellated structure 
to be frequented by travelling princes, and to be de- 
scribed by still unborn Baedekers as ''Hotel du P^ 
ordre, le plus elegant, mats assez cher*' — and Ma- 
dame, thinking of the bills to be made out in the 
case of the travelling princes, rolled the words 
''mats assez cher" luxuriously under her tongue! 

But they did not confine themselves, those kindly 
souls, to their own hopes and ambitions. With a 
warm sympathy they entered into the hopes and 
ambitions which their guest — speaking in a French 

184 



DOCTEUR THfiOPHILE 

even more softened than Madame's, or in a Spanish 
as sonorous as Don Anastasio's own — eagerly con- 
fided to them. Before the dinner was half over they 
were as enthusiastic as he was about the fame that 
was to be his as a great physician; and by the time 
that the dinner was ended Madame was a sharer — 
a word and a look, quite lost upon Don Anastasio, 
made this subtle matter clear to her — in the still 
dearer love-hopes which filled and brightened the 
young fellow's heart. 

At last — their enthusiasms bounding and rebound- 
ing between them until their spirits were uplifted to 
airy heights of confidence in a glorious future — 
Madame with her own hands brought up a bottle 
of the burgundy that subsequently was to become 
famous (just bottled from the bargain cask, and be- 
cause of its rich promise of future excellence a bever- 
age most appropriate to the occasion) and in that 
strong young wine they all together drank to the 
realization of the strong young hopes which filled 
their souls: to the future greatness of Dr. Theophile; 
to the future glories of the Casa Napoleon! And 
with this toast a third sentiment was embodied 
— though Don Anastasio did not perceive the ex- 
change of glances which expressed it, and so had no 
share in it — and this was: to the crowning happiness 
of a happy love! 

II 

Shut up for twenty years in its glass prison, the 
burgundy, at least, had realized its youthful promise 

185 



AT THE CASA NAPOLEON 

of perfection. Madame, indeed, was rather anxious 
about it: and was half glad, half sorry, that only a 
dozen or so of bottles — an almost sacred deposit, in- 
comparably cobwebbed and dusty — remained in a 
corner of the bin. But some of the other youthful 
promises, to which Madame and Don Anastasio and 
Dr. Theophile had drunk together on that day of the 
first dinner in the Casa Napoleon, had not fared so 
well. 

Let me hasten to add that, so far as the fortunes 
of the Casa Napoleon were concerned, any very lively 
regrets would be wasted. It is true that Madame's 
too-sanguine Gascon imaginings had not been real- 
ized. No Baedeker had written that it was an 
^^ hotel du 1^^ ordre, le plus eUgant, mats assez cher*'; 
and — although on one exalted occasion it had shel- 
tered a Marques — no travelling princes had come 
within its gates to learn from Don Anastasio what 
wonders could be wrought with "extras" in a skil- 
fully manipulated bill. But, on the other hand, the 
fame of Madame's Toulousian cooking had travelled 
far over at least one hemisphere — mainly to the 
islands of the Caribbean and to most of the countries 
of the Spanish Main — and with it had travelled also 
a good account of the cleanliness and comfort which 
kept worthy company with her soulfully considered 
bills of fare. Therefore did travellers from those 
distant regions come, and come again, to the Casa 
Napoleon: and throughout the spring and summer 
and autumn, when these southern folk were most 
in evidence, there was such a clatter in the big 
dining-room of softened French and of ringing Span- 

i86 



DOCTEUR THEOPHILE 

ish, and such a show of foreign faces, grading up- 
ward from Haytian jet-black to mere sunburned 
Spanish-American brown, that it seemed as though 
half the mainland and half the islands of the sea 
were there! And if princes came not, there did come 
now and then — centrifugally outshot and violently 
projected thither by their own revolutions — black 
or brown or cofFee-colored ex-presidents of the Hay- 
tian Republic: upon whom Don Anastasio got in 
some very fine work indeed in the bill-making way. 
Nor did the Casa Napoleon in the least languish 
during the close season for revolutions — when ex- 
presidents had no need of its shelter; nor during 
the chill time of winter, when its southern patrons 
wisely stayed at home. Indeed, had never a wan- 
dering foreigner signed his name on Don Anastasio's 
register, there still was a local clientele that would 
have kept the wolf a long way from the door. Mon- 
sieur Duvent — dealer in a highly respectable gam- 
ing establishment in South Fifth Avenue — never 
even dreamed of eating his daily dinner and drink- 
ing his daily half-bottle of Pontet-Canet elsewhere; 
Colonel Withersby — ^well and unfavorably known to 
a large circle of Spanish Americans whom he had 
interested in tramway promotions under varying 
conditions but with uniform results — always made 
the Casa his headquarters when in New York; so 
did Polly and Ned Harrison — known professionally 
as Miss Violet Bream and Mr. Claude Dunbar — 
when they were so fortunate as to have a metro- 
politan engagement, or so unfortunate as not to 
have any engagement at all; so did Mrs. Myrtle 

187 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

Vane — a lady of marked illiterary attainments who 
in winter did society gossip for the "yellowest" 
wing of the newspaper press, and who in summer 
faked quite brilliantly scandalous letters from any 
desired seaside or mountainside fashionable re- 
sort; so did Mrs. Mortimer — a ripely charming 
personage of independent means and engaging ac- 
complishments who always occupied the first floor 
front during the travelling season, and who made a 
point of perfecting her French and Spanish by gra- 
ciously cordial intercourse with the more elegant of 
the male travellers who came up from southern 
lands. And besides these residents, who made a 
pleasantly friendly company in the dining-room, the 
restaurant of the Casa was crowded nightly by a 
very lively throng of artists and newspaper men, 
and by a handsome representation of the public at 
large. 

Even Madame, in the depths of her heart, was 
satisfied with the good fortune that deservedly had 
attended their venture; and Don Anastasio, most 
tactlessly, confronted her with her contentment 
when — as happened sometimes — the thought of how 
her Gascon imaginings of princes had not materi- 
alized caused her to repine: and his ill-advised at- 
tempt at too philosophic comforting invariably led 
to his having a very bad quarter of an hour. But 
he was a true philosopher, was Don Anastasio, and 
when these storms burst upon him he bowed to 
them in silence: which offensively defensive pas- 
sivity, after momentarily aggravating their violence, 
of necessity led onward to a calm. On the part of 

i88 



DOCTEUR THEOPHILE 

Don Anastasio himself there was no repining. He 
was more than content with the happy results which 
had flowed from his application of the precepts of 
the wise King Alonzo to the practice of keeping a 
first-class second-class hotel. 



Ill 

From my list of the patrons of the Casa Napoleon 
I have omitted purposely the name of Dr. Theo- 
phile: and this not because he was the least, but be- 
cause he was the greatest of them — the dean of that 
faculty of good cheer. His table in the snuggest cor- 
ner of the dining-room — under the glazed door of 
the closet on the shelves of which were ranged 
(empty) wine-bottles bearing the impressive names 
of half the chateaux and schlosses in Christendom 
— ^was sacred to him; so sacred that a cofFee-colored 
ex-President of Hayti had left the Casa in dudgeon 
because he was not permitted to occupy it. That 
Don Anastasio and Madame had made such a sacri- 
fice of interest to friendship shows pointedly how 
warm their friendship was; nor was it lessened, 
though the sting of losing so well-paying a guest 
was palHated, by the fact that Don Anastasio got 
in on the departing ex-President a victorious parting 
shot in the shape of a brilliantly imaginative bill. 

The affectionate esteem in which Dr. Theophile 
was held, as this incident demonstrates, by the re- 
sponsible heads of the Casa Napoleon cropped out 
everywhere throughout the entire establishment. 

189 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

The chef would have got up in the middle of the 
night to cook a mere mutton chop for him; Leon, 
the one-eyed French waiter, and Telesforo, the coal- 
black Cuban waiter, fairly tumbled over each other 
in their eagerness to serve him; Marie, the far too 
good-looking French chambermaid, referred to him 
habitually as '' cet ange^ Superficially considered, 
Marie's phrase — as applied to a middle-aged gentle- 
man of sarcastic temperament and crusty speech — 
did not seem precisely appropriate. But in using 
it Marie was thinking of the time when her old 
French grandmother fell ill in her poor little lodging, 
and was brought by Dr. Theophile to the best room 
in his own house in Macdougal Street, and there 
was cared for as though she had been a duchess, and 
was nursed by a hired nurse at his charges, and so 
was brought back to life again from death's very 
door — and so perhaps, regarded in the light of these 
facts, her phrase was not so far out of the way after 
all. 

It was for value received of this kind, though not 
always of this degree, that Dr. Theophile — in spite 
of his sarcasms and his crustiness — had so strong a 
hold upon so many hearts. When Folly Harrison 
sprained her ankle on the very day that she got her 
first engagement north of Fourteenth Street — it was 
not much of an engagement, but it meant the whole 
world for Polly — it was Dr. Theophile who miracu- 
lously had her on her feet again by the end of a week 
and ready to play her part. That was the starting- 
point of Polly's great success — she was starring it 
two years later — and her gratitude to Dr. Theophile 

190 



DOCTEUR THfiOPHILE 

knew no bounds. Similarly, Mrs. Myrtle Vane was 
grateful to him for the pick-me-up that he devised 
for her use when her burden of scandalous columns 
grew to be over-heavy — a pick-me-up that got her 
through her work in a canter and that did not leave 
her, as her favorite green-tea always had left her, 
as nervous as a cat in the wind. Don Anastasio — 
who believed, and who acted up to his belief, that 
a present major pleasure reasonably may be pur- 
chased at the cost of a future minor pain — heartily 
blessed the Doctor's skill in exorcising the bilious- 
ness that beset him at irregular but short intervals 
as the result of his intemperate dallyings with Ma- 
dame's rich Toulousian dishes. Colonel Withersby 
swore that there was nobody in the world who could 
pull off a swelled head like "the Doc" — and so it 
went all down the line. But grateful to Dr. Theo- 
phile beyond all others were a certain Mr. and Mrs. 
John Rayford, whose home was in Caracas with 
their rich uncle, Don Guillermo Strahan: for Dr. 
Theophile had saved Mrs. Rayford's life, there in 
the Casa Napoleon, when a cruel illness laid hold 
upon her in a time of great poverty — before they 
knew that they had any rich uncle at all. When 
these Caracas people came northward on a visit, 
as they did every year or two, their explosions of 
affection really made Dr. Theophile quite uncom- 
fortable — and glad to turn to the needs of Don 
Guillermo and Don Anastasio, whose reckless feast- 
ing together quickly made them targets for his blue 
pills. 

And outside of this circle of grateful hearts close 

191 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

about him there was a far larger circle of hearts full 
of gratitude to Dr. Theophile: the possessors of 
which — an ever-shifting and varying company, of 
which the only constant factor was that it steadily 
got larger as the years went on — ^were the poor whom 
he loved and served. Some of those to whom he 
ministered he did not know by name. More he 
knew by names which he also knew did not belong 
to them. Down in the South Fifth Avenue region 
names do not necessarily, as elsewhere, go with per- 
sons; and names of convenience are among the recog- 
nized and accepted convenances of a society that 
knows no pride of ancestry, and that frequently has 
a well-grounded aversion to the parading of ancestral 
facts. For waifs and astrays from many lands are 
congregated there: expatriots who have been driven 
by undeserved misfortune, or by a desire to keep 
ahead of entirely deserved misfortune, to take refuge 
in a country where all modestly they may rest un- 
known. 

To these broken brothers Dr. Theophile cagried 
great help and comforting: serving them partly be- 
cause the example set by San Juan de Dios, that 
sweet comforter of the desolate, was dear to him; 
partly from pure love and pity; partly that in the 
tender work of healing the hurts of his fellows he 
might dull a little the pain of his own heart-hurt 
that never could be healed. And so among them he 
went ministering; and they, trusting and loving him, 
came in their sickness or in their sorrow confidently 
to ask help of him — for their broken bodies, for their 
broken fortunes, for their broken souls. Considered 

192 



DOCTEUR THEOPHILE 

from a money standpoint it was not a lucrative prac- 
tice, this of Dr. Theophile's. But that was not the 
standpoint from which he considered it. He was 
satisfied with the knowledge that he had a large and 
ever-growing credit in the Bank of Grateful Hearts. 



IV 

From the facts set forth in the foregoing summary 
of events, and still more pointedly from the facts 
left out of it, the inference justly may be drawn that 
those high ambitions which so thrillingly had sea- 
soned Dr. Theophile's first dinner in the Casa Na- 
poleon had not been realized. To him the passing 
years had not brought such glad fulfilment of san- 
guine forecasts as had come to a very reasonable 
degree in the case of the little hotel, and in full per- 
fection in the case of Madame's famous cask of bur- 
gundy: his practice as a physician had not carried 
him up many rounds of Fame's ladder; and the ten- 
derer, yet far stronger, ambition that he had cher- 
ished — that had been the very life of him — had 
come to nought. 

This withering of his hopes — ^which had made 
him, though they knew it not, very closely akin to 
the broken brothers among whom he ministered — 
had come to him, as to many a man before him, 
through the wreck of the chief of them : his hope of 
winning to himself the very tender yet most strongly 
upholding comfort of a life-long love. When that 
failed him, suddenly and cruelly, the other ambition 

193 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

that had been a part of it failed him also. Being a 
strong man, he did not suffer despair to conquer him; 
and his love of his profession held him fast to it — 
along with the desire, even then well developed, to 
carry healing and comforting to his fellow-men. But 
his longing for the top round of Fame's ladder died 
and was forgotten — save that now and then, when 
a bitter mood was on him, he revived its memory in 
sarcastic apostrophe-jibing at his own sorrow by 
pathologic reflections upon the application of Fame's 
balsam to a broken heart. His habit of sarcasm, 
thus developed upon himself, came in time to be a 
part of his nature. He was for pricking bubbles 
wherever he found them; but even in the case of 
bubbles, as was noted by acute observers, the lash 
of his wit fell as seldom upon the weak as it fell 
often upon the strong. 

Yet for a time after his coming to New York there 
were no signs of the storm that was gathering for 
Dr. Theophile; and as the metaphysicians (luckily, 
I think) have not yet invented a psychic barometer 
which will give us warning in such matters, and 
thereby make us miserable before our misfortunes 
as well as after them, his high hopes stood by him 
and he was a very happy man. 

To Madame, as has been stated, a word and a 
look — ^when they were at their health-drinking at 
that first Casa Napoleon dinner — had given a hint 
of the deep joy which enriched all other joys for 
him; and as Madame was the very last woman in 
the world to rest content with no more than a hint 
of a love story, and also was a woman of that warmly 

194 



DOCTEUR THEOPHILE 

sympathetic sort to whom love stones drift natu- 
rally, it was not long before she knew the whole of it 
— and was rather sharply disappointed by finding 
that it was of the simplest: without a trace of those 
dangers and difficulties which give to love stories, 
at least to outsiders, their liveliest zest. 

In truth, this love affair of Dr. Theophile's was 
almost culpably commonplace. The plantations of 
his father and of his Angele's father lay side by side. 
He and she were only children, and had been in love 
with each other from before they could remember. 
The strongest hope of their fathers was that they 
should marry, and so in the end make the two plan- 
tations one. Excepting the very slight opposition 
that had arisen when he developed his desire to be- 
come a physician, not the slightest cloud ever had 
darkened their happiness. Even that cloud had 
vanished quickly — the two fathers wisely agreeing 
that it was a good thing for him to have a profession 
to fall back upon in the not impossible event of the 
plantations going wrong. And so he and his Angele 
were to be married as soon as he had taken his doc- 
tor's degree. 

Madame almost sniffed when she found that this 
was the whole of it. She probed for at least a rival: 
and was met by the absolute assurance that there 
was not a ghost of one. She ventured to hint that 
long separations did not tend to safety in the case 
of lovers who were, respectively, but seventeen and 
twenty-one years old: and at that the look of the 
twenty-one-year-old lover became so pained and so 
reproachful that she took the back-track hurriedly 

14 195 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

— not because of any real change in her opinions 
(Madame was of an age, and had much worldly wis- 
dom) but because of her tenderness for the strong 
faith that was in his young true heart. 

Yet in spite of her worldly wisdom, and of her 
natural disdain of a love affair in which was only 
commonplace happiness, Madame could not but 
find pleasure in watching this young lover's eager 
joy fulness as he bent himself with all his strength 
to his studies while the harsh winter went coldly on. 
For, after all, Madame knew — and the better be- 
cause of the very fulness of her worldly wisdom — 
that pure happiness is a far rarer excitement than 
pure sorrow; and as such is to be admired and re- 
joiced in when it is found. Therefore, when she had 
got over being aggrieved because his love story was 
such a tame love story — and because of her good 
heart her aggrievedness was not long lasting — Dr. 
Theophile had the comfort of her warm and cheerful 
sympathy; and when — the winter and the first 
term of his studies being ended — he went back all 
radiantly to Guadeloupe to bask through the sum- 
mer in southern sunshine and in southern love, she 
gave him God-speed with all her heart. 

But when he came back in the early autumn to 
go at his work again — ^walking into the Casa Napo- 
leon with a lagging step very unlike his springing 
step when he had walked out of it — Madame had 
need to take but a single glance at him to know that 
the note of tragedy that would give a direful interest 
to his too happy love story had come into it at last. 
His very body seemed to have shrunk and wasted 

196 



DOCTEUR THfiOPHILE 

and his short black frock-coat was all in wrinkles 
and had lost utterly its jauntiness. Even his panama 
hat somehow had about it a sorrowing and a hang- 
dog air. But the outward sign of his inward trouble 
which to Madame instantly was convincing was the 
dreary lack-lustre of his sorrowful eyes. Being, as 
I have said, of an age, Madame had seen that same 
dreary lack-lustre look in other eyes and knew that 
its meaning was heart-wreck. Womanlike, though, 
she did not rest satisfied until she had his word for 
it — though she knew, of course, what pain she would 
inflict in probing such a wound. The tenderest and 
the most truly loving of women are that way: be- 
lieving, seemingly, that a tragedy that a man is ex- 
erting his whole strength to hide and to master can 
be assuaged by a little kindly talk. At that first 
round, to be sure, she did not get much out of him. 
Yet was there enough to justify her worst conclu- 
sions in the few words which he said huskily as he 
broke away with a rough suddenness from her 
friendly restraining hold upon his arm: "Madame, 
you spoke bitter truth when you said that hearts 
are not to be trusted when they are very young!" 



Naturally, Madame did not rest content with this 
very vague and general statement of Dr. Theophile's 
heart-wreck. To do her justice, though, curiosity 
was far from being the strongest element in her de- 
termination to make him tell her all that there was 

197 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

to tell. She had a lively afFection for the young fel- 
low, and she most wanted to get at the very roots of 
his sorrow because she hoped that she might be able, 
knowing everything, to advise him into the way of 
happiness again: for Madame knew, as all women 
know, that a man's natural disposition in love mat- 
ters is to get himself into all manner of needless 
troubles by going wrong in all possible ways. There- 
fore she gave him no peace until he had made a clean 
breast to her of everything; and, indeed, having once 
fairly got started he was glad to go on — finding a cer- 
tain bitter pleasure in pouring the whole dismal 
story into her sympathetic heart. 

Being a world-crushing calamity that he had to 
tell about (he felt, as all of us do, that he was the 
world's centre, and that his personal catastrophes 
were cataclysmic) he made his story a long one; and 
Madame, being avid of details in such matters, so 
far from checking him gave him all encouragement 
to expand. Closeted in the sitting-room of the 
best suite — the suite assigned to ex-presidents, when 
such were in season — they were a whole afternoon 
over it; and Madame, to avoid interruption, even 
sent down to the chef the key of the store-room: 
an unprecedented mark of confidence which so as- 
tonished that functionary as to render him incapa- 
ble of abusing it. But for all that Dr. Theophile 
made his story such a long one, the essence of it 
may be set forth in a few words. 

For a good many years, without his at all suspect- 
ing that anything was wrong, things had been going 
very badly indeed on the plantation. Only a few 

198 



DOCTEUR THEOPHILE 

days before his arrival in Guadeloupe the climax was 
reached in a complete and final crash. He had not 
even seen the old home: when he landed at Basse 
Terre his father had met him there, come across 
from the other side of the island, and had told him 
that the old home was gone — that everything was 
gone save the merest trifle left over after the settle- 
ment with the banks. There was one tiny bit of 
salvage: the little fortune, his mother's wedding 
portion, that he had inherited when his mother died. 
That would have gone, too, of course, had there been 
debts beyond those which the sale of the plantation 
had satisfied. And some of it did have to go, he 
said, in caring through that summer of disaster for 
his father — whose heartbreak took shape in a low 
fever which little by little wasted him, and at last 
put an end together to his unhappiness and to 
his life. 

"And then," said Dr. Theophile, as though in con- 
clusion, "I came back to New York. Here is my 
only chance. I have enough money to keep body 
and soul together until I take my degree; and after 
I have taken my degree it will be my own fault if I 
starve. Moreover," he added grimly, "I have an 
uncle in France whose fortune no doubt will come 
to me — years after its coming will do me any good." 

Madame declined, of course, to accept as conclu- 
sive this highly premature conclusion — which left 
the vital part of the matter unaccounted for and 
hanging in the air. Slowly, under the spur of her 
questioning, the rest of the story was dragged out 
of him; and, as he said quite truly, there was very 

199 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

little to tell — upon which Madame's ultimate severe 
comment was that if he had had so much as two 
grains of sense in his whole composition his story 
would have been longer and would not have had a 
bad end. 

They had separated, he said; but Madame must 
understand that his Angele had not precisely thrown 
him over because of the wreck of his fortunes — she 
merely had accepted her freedom when he had offered 
to set her free. And the root of the matter lay in the 
quarrel that there had been between their fathers — 
a quarrel that had come when her father (because 
he was himself in straits, he had said) had refused 
help to Dr. Theophile's father in the last round of 
that long fight with the banks. Very possibly the 
excuse was an honest one; but his father, being half 
mad over his misfortunes, would not believe it — 
and such bitter words had passed between them 
that they had come to open hate. And that, on top 
of all the other disaster, was what his father had told 
him on that black day of his arrival in Basse Terre. 

At first he was quite stunned, he said; and then, 
as his wits came back to him a little, it seemed to him 
that — being a ruined man, and their fathers at open 
enmity — it was his duty in honor to set her free. (At 
that Madame groaned.) And so he wrote to her: 
telling her that for her own good he gave her up 
willingly, and that he hoped (here his voice broke 
badly) that she soon would forget him, and that she 
would have a long and a happy life in the loving 
care of some less unfortunate man. 

"And you sent that letter?" Madame asked icily. 

200 



DOCTEUR THfiOPHILE 

Yes, he had sent it in the end; but not until the 
very end. He had hoped that some word would 
come from her. But none came. And so, at last, 
just before he left Basse Terre, he sent it — and there 
was no reply! His voice broke again and his look 
was very piteous. For a moment he was silent. 
Then he seized Madame's hand, and with a choking 
sob broke out: "And, oh, I did think that she would 
be true to me — that she would write to me to come 
to her — that in spite of everything she would hold 
fast to me! It was my duty to free her — but I did 
not think that she would be so ready to be set free!'' 

Having thus come to the climax of his dismal 
story, this sorrowful lover paused in expectation of 
comforting and sympathy. But to his pained sur- 
prise Madame withdrew her hand sharply; and then 
— so far from giving him sympathy — gave him such 
a dressing as few sorrowful lovers ever have been 
unlucky enough to receive! 

Nothing more hopelessly stupid, nothing more 
cruelly selfish, nothing more utterly heartless, she 
declared with Toulousian vehemence, ever had come 
to her knowledge! He had spent three months and 
more within a day's journey of the woman he pro- 
fessed to love, and never had made a sign of his love 
to her. By his silence he had given her to under- 
stand that he shared in his father's quarrel. Then, 
coolly, he had written to her that he gave her up 
"willingly" — and left the island almost as soon as 
he had planted that stab in her heart! His conduct, 
she declared hotly, would have been that of a mon- 
ster — had it not been that of a baby fool! Much 

20 1 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

more to the same effect did Madame give him, until 
he was quite dazed by it: and in the end whipped 
about suddenly from objurgation to entreaty and im- 
plored him to write instantly and recall his cruel 
words. And then Madame fell to crying softly — 
quite as though it were a love affair of her own. 

To all this he answered gloomily, when he had 
pulled himself together a little, that it was not for 
him to write a letter but for her. If she truly had 
loved him, he said, she would not have suffered him 
to leave her that way — for all that he was a ruined 
man. But, being a ruined man, he could not entreat 
her — even if the quarrel between their fathers had 
not been in the way. He had hoped with an agoniz- 
ing hope that she would stay true to him. But no 
letter had come from her, and his hope was dying — 
was almost gone. 

As if any woman, Madame argued in anger, would 
make advances after being sent to the right about 
in that cruel fashion! And again she besought him 
to write — to write without another moment of delay. 

But Dr. Theophile was of a resolute nature — of 
a pig-headed obstinacy, Madame put it — and having 
taken what he believed to be the right course he 
adhered to it. He did not write the letter that 
Madame so vigorously urged him to write — and the 
letter that with an ever lessening hope he hoped for 
never came. 

VI 

A man who inconsequently lives on after having 
broken his neck — as happens sometimes — is ac- 

20Z 



DOCTEUR THfiOPHILE 

counted a curiosity; but no curiosity whatever at- 
taches to the countless men and women who live 
on with broken hearts. Dr. Theophile lived on that 
way, and to outward appearances was not much 
the worse for it. With an energy that was partly 
dull and partly savage, he ground at his studies; 
and in due time was rewarded for his grinding by 
gaining his doctor's degree. After that, in a little 
while — having a sound knowledge of his profession 
and a real love for it, and having also three handles 
to it in his command of three languages — he found 
that there was standing-room for him of a modest 
sort in New York. That quite satisfied him. He 
had given up his notions of fame. 

It was a little while after the question of standing- 
room had been decided in his favor that there came up 
from Guadeloupe a rumor that his Angele (as in his 
heart of hearts he still called her) was to be married 
— to whom, the rumor did not tell. That sent him 
to Madame for comforting. But it was very cold 
comfort that Madame gave him. Did he imagine, 
she asked hotly, that any reasonable woman would 
settle down to wearing the willow for a man who 
had treated her with absolutely heartless cruelty? 
And from that she went on to draw a comparison 
between Dr. Theophile and ferocious wild beasts — 
so much to the advantage of the wild beasts that 
Dr. Theophile incontinently bolted from the room! 
But the rumor never became more than a rumor — 
as it pretty certainly would have done had it been 
based in truth. 

A year or so later, however, another piece of news 

203 



AT THE CASA NAPOLEON 

came up from Guadeloupe of such a nature that Dr. 
Theophile, by the first steamer leaving after his re- 
ceipt of it, went journeying into the south. This 
was not a rumor at all. It was an explicit statement 
that his Angele's father, as had happened earlier to 
his own father, had been overtaken by "sugar- 
planter's luck" — his debts had eaten up his fortune 
and his plantation had gone to the banks. 

Dr. Theophile's first thought when this news 
came to him was a joyful thought, and joy was with 
him as he went on into the south: for at last the 
barrier which fate had raised between his love and 
his honor was swept away. To this ruined gentle- 
man he was free to offer himself as a son-in-law; to 
this ruined gentleman's daughter he was free to 
declare openly the love that unceasingly had been 
hers. And he built up a very magnificent air-castle 
as the ship carried him onward through the tropic 
sunshine to his island haven in the tropic ^sea. 

But when he reached that haven his air-castles 
came tumbling down about his ears! His Angele 
and her father had left Guadeloupe, and no one 
could tell him whither they had gone. Tracking 
them to Havana was easy: but there — where you 
may take ship for France or for England or for 
a score of ports in English-speaking or Spanish- 
speaking America — the track disappeared. He did 
not give up his search lightly; but when, at last, he 
did give it up, and came back to New York again, 
he was at close quarters with despair. 

And then Fortune, having thus done her bitter 
worst by Dr. Theophile, whipped about (as her way 

204 



DOCTEUR THEOPHILE 

is) and made a great bustle of befriending him : send- 
ing him, at the very moment when he was face to 
face with utter hopelessness, his long-expected in- 
heritance from his uncle in France. Justly enough, 
he gave no thanks to Fortune for showing him her 
favor, as he had said she would show it, years after 
it would do him any good. By his own skill and by 
his own hard work, without any help from Fortune 
whatever, the standing-room that he had won for 
himself in New York at the outset had become easy 
and broad. So far as his own needs were concerned, 
he had no use for this belated inheritance — that 
would have made his life radiant had it only come 
in time. 

But after his first sharp outburst of resentment 
against this good luck which had come too late to 
him, he accepted it thankfully — because it enabled 
him to realize a long-cherished project for the better- 
ment of the broken brothers whom he served. Hav- 
ing received his French fortune, he abandoned his 
long-time lodgings in Macdougal Street and took 
possession of a big house in that same modest 
thoroughfare — and made there a shelter, half hos- 
pice and half hospital, which thenceforward became 
a sure refuge for those who went down on the firing- 
line of life's battle so friendless that there was no 
one to carry them to the rear. 

In that pleasant resting-place the weary were re- 
freshed and comforted until they could stand and 
fight again; and many near to dying — as Marie's 
grandmother had been — there were cared for tender- 
ly and won back to life. As to the pension list and 

205 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

the out-patient department of this estabHshment, 
not even Dr. Theophile himself could have given any- 
trustworthy statistics of them. Put upon oath, he 
could have furnished no more than the vague informa- 
tion that their limits were his income and his strength 
to serve. But the thought of compiling such statis- 
tics did not occur to him. He was content to know 
that, following in the footsteps of San Juan de Dios, 
he had brought to dwell with him the sweetest and 
the tenderest of all the Madonnas, Nuestra Seiiora 
de los Desamparados — Our Lady of the Forsaken — 
and had made a home for her that would last as 
long as he himself should live. 



VII 

Yet while Dr. Theophile's inner nature thus was 
gentle and most pitiful, his outer nature was aggres- 
sively crotchetty — not to say severe. Up in Para- 
dise, no doubt. Our Lady of the Forsaken and San 
Juan de Dios — knowing the sweet well-springs of his 
life — interchanged smiles now and then as they 
looked down from the golden battlements and be- 
held the crusty outside of him that was turned 
toward those who needed not his aid. For Dr. The- 
ophile's attitude toward mankind in general was 
remonstrant; and as his argumentative habit was 
backed by a caustic wit, that made verbal combat a 
pleasure to him and bubble-pricking a delight, his 
position in ordinary society was very like that which 
among fishes is occupied by an electric eel. Save 

206 



DOCTEUR THfiOPHILE 

for the certainty that it was coming, there never 
was any certainty as to how or where he would get 
in his paralyzing blow — though there always was 
the farther certainty that when that blow had been 
delivered the argument would be ended or the bub- 
ble would be resolved into very thin air! 

But then, as I have said, he hit only those who 
were strong enough to hit back — and whoever did 
hit back, and so invited destruction, merely met the 
fate that such rashness deserved. Colonel Withers- 
by, for instance — ^whose nature was both rash and 
pugnacious, and whose confirmed habit of blowing 
bubbles had depleted many pockets for the reple- 
tion of his own — had tried a throw with Dr. Theo- 
phile on various occasions in the early days of their 
acquaintance: until repeated discomfitures had con- 
vinced him that the throwing always was one way. 
And this military personage summed the situation 
in belicose metaphor when he asked of Don Ana- 

stasio: "What the is the good of having the 

drop on a man who somehow always has your scalp 
in his pocket before you can fire?" That Don Ana- 
stasio, to whom Colonel Withersby's florid speech 
at all times was confusing, perceived the meaning 
of this metaphor is improbable. But he made ade- 
quate reply to it by falHng back on the vaguest and 
most useful phrase in his own rich language — say- 
ing impressively, as he raised his shoulders and 
turned the palms of his hands outward: "Sir, who 
knows?" But even in his cold moments of com- 
plete sobriety — ^which were very rare moments — 
Colonel Withersby bore no malice against Dr. Theo- 

207 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

phile; and in his normal warm moments — ^when a 
broad kindliness begotten of many cocktails filled 
his nature with a generous glow — he was wont to 
declare his admiration for Dr. Theophile in liberal 
terms. "The Doc's all right," he would say a little 
thickly. "Nothin's wrong with the Doc — any 
more'n there is with a buzz-saw. Let a buzz-saw 
alone, and it '11 let you alone. Monkey with a buzz- 
saw, and it '11 get its work right in on you an' you'll 
be lookin' around on the floor for your scraps. Same 
way with the Doc — same way every time. But 
take him right, and he's a peach from the word go. 
He's about the whitest white man I ever knew, th' 
Doc is. There's not a fly on him from his head to 
his heels!" 

Stated in varying terms, the views thus expressed 
by Colonel Withersby were general, as I have said, 
throughout the little circle which centred in the 
Casa Napoleon. And especially in the feminine 
portion of that circle was the feeling toward Dr. 
Theophile — and this in despite of his habitual jibing 
at women — a very cordial one. For a time, to be 
sure, after that conference in the sitting-room of 
the ex-presidents, there had been a marked chill 
in Madame's manner toward him; but, being 
founded in an impersonal animosity, her resentment 
wore off* eventually and she gave him again his 
place in a warm corner of her heart. That she 
guarded with absolute strictness the facts of the 
story then confided to her is improbable — other- 
wise they scarcely would have been known, as they 
certainly were known, to Mrs. Rayford, and to 

208 



DOCTEUR THEOPHILE 

Polly Harrison, and to Mrs. Myrtle Vane: all of 
whom, rather to his astonishment, manifested an 
almost maternal solicitude for his welfare. And 
in talking among themselves, these ladies frankly 
avowed an affection for him that, could he have 
heard their avowals, would have filled him with a 
very lively surprise. Even Mrs. Mortimer, though 
not avowedly, shared in this feeling; which was the 
more remarkable because her actual disposition tow- 
ard men was as cynical as was Dr. Theophile's 
declared disposition toward women; and, more- 
over, Mrs. Mortimer's cynicism was the outgrowth 
of a diffuse and varied experience of an eminently 
macadamizing sort. But a woman must be hardened 
quite out of all womanhood who has not sorrowing 
sympathy for a man whose life has been blighted 
by a melancholy misadventure in love. 

Fortunately for himself, Dr. Theophile did not 
know that his broken heart thus was worn, in a way, 
upon his sleeve. Believing that this disordered or- 
gan was his own private property, he tried to keep 
the fracture hidden even from himself by pouring 
out for the good of the sorrowing and the suffering 
the loving charity with which its fragments abun- 
dantly were filled. To the fulness of his strength, 
to the fulness of his fortune, he ministered to the 
needs of his brothers who fell by the wayside friend- 
less; and the more tenderly because from his own 
crushed happiness came forth to him an infinite 
pitifulness — even as the sweetest fragrance comes 
from trampled herbs. Among those broken brothers 
his healing presence was as a grace and a blessing 

209 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

— and his rusty black garments and his panama 
hat, or the slouched felt hat that replaced it in win- 
ter, seemed to those of them who knew about such 
matters as the habit of one of the Orders vowed to 
the loving helping of the sick and weak and poor. 
Nor was this fancy wholly fanciful. Consciously he 
strove to walk in the sweet ways of San Juan de 
Dios; consciously he strove that Our Lady of the 
Forsaken should be well served. 

And so the twenty years which had brought suc- 
cess to the Casa Napoleon, and which had brought 
Madame's burgundy to a pitch of perilous perfec- 
tion, had gone sadly for Dr. Theophile but not bit- 
terly — for into a life of loving helpfulness bitterness 
may not come. And because he thus had kept his 
nature sweet — had mellowed, not hardened, through 
that long season of sorrow — time had dealt very 
gently with him. There was a touch of gray about 
his temples, to be sure; but his crisp short beard, 
as black as ever, and his lean body, as vigorous as 
ever, gave no hint that he was turned of forty — 
with a year to spare on the wrong side. Blessings, 
as well as curses, come home to roost sometimes. 
Youth, and the tenderness which is a part of youth, 
had stayed by Dr. Theophile because of those rich 
deposits which for half a lifetime he had been mak- 
ing in the Bank of Grateful Hearts. 

VIII 

Monsieur Duvent, the dealer in the eminently 
respectable gaming establishment in South Fifth 

2IO 



DOCTEUR THfiOPHILE 

Avenue, had few professional equals; and only on 
one occasion — ^when he was beguiled by the devil 
and Colonel Withersby into a disastrous encounter 
at cards with a certain Marques de Valdeflores — 
had he met a superior at any so-called game of 
chance. Nor was he at all squeamish in his choice 
of those upon whom he exercised his skill. Indeed 
— to quote Colonel Withersby, whose knowledge in 
the premises was extensive — he would not have 
hesitated, had opportunity arisen, to scoop the mar- 
row out of his own grandfather's bones. This state- 
ment of the Colonel's, of course, was hyperbolic; 
but many simple-minded persons, who had been in- 
duced by a misplaced confidence in Monsieur Du- 
vent's conception of the duties of hospitality to sit 
opposite to him at his own table, could have testified 
to its substantial truth. 

Yet in despite of (or independently of) his pro- 
fessional instincts and methods. Monsieur Duvent 
had a heart — and on more than one occasion the 
amiable, though perhaps a little belated, workings 
of that kindly organ had brought him into humane 
relations with Dr. Theophile: to whom, in an un- 
professional way, he made report of cases of sick- 
ness or of suffering which, in a professional way, 
had come under his notice — for which, indeed, he 
not infrequently was in part responsible. A man 
less learned in the curious contradictoriness of hu- 
man nature than was Dr. Theophile might have 
been disposed to read a lecture now and then to 
Monsieur Duvent upon his too Hteral, not to say 
extreme, interpretation of a scriptural injunction; 

15 211 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

which led him not only to keep his right and left 
hands in ignorance of each other's doings, but act- 
ually to exercise those members at cross-purposes. 
But Dr. Theophile had sounded the depths of too 
many hearts, and had found too many strata of 
underlying tenderness in the most hardened of them, 
for such phenomena to excite his resentment or even 
his surprise. Indeed, he had come — as we all come 
sooner or later: the more fortunate of us sooner — 
to the conviction that somewhere in every heart is 
a strain of gentleness and of sweetness that needs 
only to be found and to be developed to become a 
saving grace. And so, asking no questions as to 
the wounds which Monsieur Duvent's professional 
right hand, his dealing hand, might have inflicted, 
he never failed to respond cordially to that gentle- 
man's appeals to assist his unprofessional left hand 
in caring for the hurt and the maimed. 

These facts being premised, it is evident that 
there was not anything obviously fateful and por- 
tentous about Monsieur Duvent when, quite in 
the usual way, he called Dr. Theophile aside in the 
smoking-room of the Casa Napoleon one evening 
to ask for his usual charitable services in a case of 
the usual kind. But then Fate, as it operates in 
this queer world of ours, has a way of putting us off 
our guard by working along the most commonplace 
lines to results which are at once revolutionizing 
and overwhelming — as though actuated by a whim- 
sical fancy for infusing always into our great joys 
and our great sorrows the inconsequent element of 
surprise. To Dr. Theophile — ^who would have been 

212 



DOCTEUR THfiOPHILE 

justified in looking about him for joyful flaming 
characters on the smoking-room walls — there came 
no glad premonitions of approaching happiness as 
he listened gravely to Monsieur Duvent's statement 
of a case that in its broad outlines was wholly com- 
monplace: an old man, very poor — and poorer be- 
cause of his transactions with the bank over which 
Monsieur Duvent presided — ^who was lying ill and in 
need of a doctor's care. And Monsieur Duvent was 
of the opinion that even a doctor's care could not 
keep him long alive. 

"For this illness which is upon him," the worthy 
gamester explained, "is not an active illness, but a 
fading out of life — because all that is worth living 
for is gone. What he needs, this poor monsieur, is 
not medicine, but new hope — and you cannot give 
him that. It is for the sake of his daughter that I 
would have you go to him. She will have comfort 
in seeing you do all that can be done; and what 
comfort can be given her she deserves — for she is 
a very honest woman — this brave mademoiselle. 
Many times she has come to me to beg that I would 
not permit her father to play. Others have done 
that, of course, and I must be the same to all. It is 
not my business to drive players from my table. 
I myself must live. But I have treated that poor 
monsieur with a tenderness ! Time and again I have 
permitted him — this, you will understand. Monsieur 
le Docteur, is in strict confidence — to recoup com- 
pletely; and then I have begged him in private to 
have no more to do with cards — with which, in 
truth, he is but a child. And always, in a night or 

213 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

two, he has forced me to win back again the money 
that I have made him a present of, and more be- 
side. For you see. Monsieur, when an old man takes 
to gaming it is a worse madness with him than when 
he takes to love. Moreover in the case of this old 
man, there is behind his madness for gaming the 
madness of despair." 

Monsieur Duvent sighed a moralizing sigh and 
was silent for a moment. Then he went on: "I do 
not know the whole of this poor monsieur's history, 
and I am sure that I do not know his true name; 
but from what at times he has let drop about his 
past life, and from what his daughter, that excellent 
woman, has told me, I know a great deal. He comes 
from your own island of Guadeloupe, Monsieur le 
Docteur, and quite possibly you may have known 
him there in his better days. He was a rich man, 
a planter — until, as happens often in these later 
times, I am told, to your planters, his riches took 
wings to themselves and flew away." 

As Monsieur Duvent mentioned the fact that 
this old man had a daughter, a curious thought had 
occurred to Dr. Theophile that had suggested to 
him — speaking metaphorically — the haziest possible 
glow of letters of hopeful promise upon the smok- 
ing-room wall; but when Monsieur Duvent added 
that these two came from the island of Guadeloupe, 
thus creating something much more positive in the 
way of a coincidence, a sudden thrill went through 
his heart that set hope to budding there and that 
made the faint glow of those letters of promise in- 
crease suddenly to a pale flame. 

214 



DOCTEUR THfiOPHILE 

"I cannot say certainly," Monsieur Duvent an- 
swered, "but I know that it was a long while ago — 
more, a good deal more, than a dozen years. For 
that long he has been among my clients — and he 
did not come to me until the hope that brought him 
here had failed. He came to New York, you see — 
innocent that he was! — thinking that he would make 
another fortune. But men of his stamp who lose 
fortunes do not make them again. He has earned 
only the barest of bare livings, and not always that. 
Had not his daughter worked also, and very hard, 
they would have starved. You can see how it would 
be with him. Without the strength and the energy 
of youth a broken man cannot hope to mend him- 
self. It is impossible. At last he realized the hope- 
lessness of what he was doing — and then he took to 
play. His case is a very common one. Many of 
my clients come to me in that way. But from the 
time that he gave up hoping, and that is natural 
too, his life has been slipping away from him — until 
now, at last, it is almost gone." And in a moraliz- 
ing tone the excellent Monsieur Duvent concluded: 
"The uphill march of a young man is hard, and 
sometimes bitter; but the downhill march of an 
old man is far harder — and would be bitter beyond 
words were it not for the certainty that the end of 
it, where rest is, cannot be far off — no doubt this 
poor monsieur finds a little comfort in knowing that 
he is almost at the bottom of the hill, and that is 
why I say that your medicines cannot save him. 
Monsieur le Docteur. He is an old man, and of 
broken fortunes, and of broken hopes. When we 

215 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

are like that, and death comes close to us — cheering 
us with his promise of deep rest and deep forgetful- 
ness — ^we do not drive him away." 

Even had Dr. Theophile been in his normally 
argumentative mood he would not have taken issue 
with this piece of drearily sound philosophy; for he 
knew (as all of us sad elders know) that while 
youth may make a good fight against hopelessness 
and death, and while hopefulness may make a 
good fight against death and age, when age and 
hopelessness are linked together death meets with 
no resistance — because he comes not as an enemy 
but as a friend. 

But Dr. Theophile's mood just then was as far 
from normal as possible. On the foundation which 
Monsieur Duvent had given him he was building 
air-castles once more — air-castles of a sort that he 
never had dreamed would rise again; into his long 
hopeless heart a great hope was flowing warm- 
ly; on the wall the words of promise shone 
in a glaring blaze ! Yet doubtingly, trembling- 
ly, he asked the question the answer to which 
would make his air -castles realities or would 
bring them once more tumbling down about his 
ears. 

"Do you know, monsieur, the name of this — this 
good woman, the daughter?" 

" But yes, certainly. I have heard her father say 
it a hundred times. That brave mademoiselle is 
called Angele." 

And so, by the grace of Our Lady of the Forsaken 
— ^who thus happily brought happiness to the most 

216 



DOCTEUR THfiOPHILE 

faithful of all her servants — Dr. Theophile's air- 
castles stood fast! 



IX 

As to the farther events of that glad evening — 
after Monsieur Duvent, ceasing to be an instrument 
of Fate, had gone to his respectable gaming estab- 
lishment and had left Dr. Theophile to work out the 
easy remainder of his destiny in his own way — 
they more graciously may be imagined than de- 
scribed. I think that even Our Lady of the For- 
saken and San Juan de Dios — ^with tenderly smiling 
faces and eyes a little tear-dimmed — turned away 
purposely that night from the golden parapet of 
heaven: fearful lest they should peer too curiously 
into the poignant happiness of two supremely joy- 
ful hearts. No doubt, however, those sainted com- 
forters of the despairing rejoiced in a heavenly way 
together over the happiness that they were too nice 
to spy upon : over the still young lives which trium- 
phant love had made radiant and wholly youthful; 
over the old life that had been saved by newly up- 
springing hopefulness for many a year of blessed 
restfulness in peace. 

But while touching thus lightly upon the climax 
of that wondrous evening, which in its surcharge 
of joyfulness almost made up to Dr. Theophile for 
all his near a score of sorrowing years, I cannot ig- 
nore the curious perplexity which beset him when, 
at the end of it, he was walking homeward slowly 
beneath the stars. Being only a man, he was at q, 

S17 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

loss that night — and indeed, was at a loss always — 
to reduce to any sort of logical consistence the irrec- 
oncilable quantities in the conduct of his Angele: 
who had come to New York (the move thither had 
been made at her instance) expressly to be near him, 
yet who through the many years that they had 
dwelt almost as neighbors in that city resolutely had 
kept him out of her life. By way of making this tan- 
gle still more of a tangle, she had explained that of 
course he would understand that it was her love for 
him that had held her away from him; and had put 
the finishing touch to his utter bewilderment by 
saying in a tone of tender regret and longing as they 
parted : 

"My Theophile — think of all these years which we 
have lost!" 

In a general way, and with many reservations, he 
applied to Madame for an elucidation of this femi- 
nine mystery — ^when he had finished telling her, at 
the conference that they had the next day in the 
sitting-room of the ex-presidents, about the miracle 
of happiness which had turned his sorrow into joy. 
But Madame, so far from enlightening, only com- 
plicated the matter by declaring with a prompt 
positiveness that any woman would have done 
precisely the same thing under the same circum- 
stances; and by way of a rider to this obscure state- 
ment, volunteered the information that he still was 
a baby fool! After which Madame expressed her 
delight in Dr. Theophile's good fortune, greatly to 
his confusion, by falling weeping into his arms ; and 
then by laughing in the affectionate way that only 

218 



DOCTEUR THfiOPHILE 

a Southern Frenchwoman can laugh; and then by 
kissing him on both cheeks a dozen times! 

Don Anastasio, being summoned to hear the good 
news, was less tempestuous than Madame in his 
expressions of congratulation, but what he said 
came very straight from his heart. And he made 
his speech, delivered with a Spanish dignity and a 
Mexican grace, by quoting from the second law of 
the First Partida of the Wise Alonzo the selfsame 
words with which he had clinched matters with 
Madame herself twenty years before: "This order 
of matrimony was by God's own self established, 
and for this reason it is the most noble and the most 
honorable of the Seven Sacraments of the Holy 
Church. And therefore it should be kept and hon- 
ored, because it is the first sacrament that was made 
and ordained by God Himself in Paradise — ^which 
Paradise hath ever since remained marked out as 
its natural abiding-place and home!" 

It is not surprising that Dr. Theophile just then 
was in cordial accord with this handsome implica- 
tion on the part of the King of Castile that Paradise 
and matrimony are interconvertible terms; but I 
have pleasure in calling attention to the fact that 
Don Anastasio made his quotation boldly and 
heartily after a successful matrimonial experiment 
continued through twenty years. Indeed, as he 
finished it, he gave it an added point and emphasis 
by putting his arm around Madame's ample waist 
with a gallantry that made Madame blush quite 
delightfully and was altogether pleasing to behold. 

As to the excitement that broke forth in the Casa 

219 



AT THE CASA NAPOLEON 

Napoleon a little later — ^when Madame, under in- 
structions from Dr. Theophile, had bruited the 
wonderful news abroad — it is not too much to say 
that a hurricane direct from Dr. Theophile's own 
island of Guadeloupe, rending and riving as hurri- 
canes do, would have made less commotion there 
than did the announcement that this seemingly most 
celibate of celibates was to be married at last! And 
the gauntlet of congratulations which Dr. Theophile 
had to run would have driven him quite distracted 
had not the sincerity of the affection thus variously 
manifested for him touched his heart. 

That Colonel Withersby — ^who happened to be 
in the flush state immediately succeeding a (to him) 
highly successful tramway promotion — set up cham- 
pagne for everybody, goes without saying; but that 
so maculate a gentleman as was the Colonel had a 
genuine choke in his voice when he gave the "Doc's" 
health and happiness proves that even a person 
spotted all over with the stains left by manifold 
shady transactions still may have an appreciable 
residuum of warm and honest feeling in what he is 
pleased to call his soul. Monsieur Duvent, feeling 
that as the instrument of Fate something out of the 
ordinary was required of him, handsomely devoted 
his commissions upon an evening of exceptional 
winnings to the purchase of a bouquet very little 
smaller than an ordinary omnibus; and this he sent 
with his card attached to it bearing the inscription: 
*^ Hommage respectueux ef felicitations hien cordiales 
a la brave Mademoiselle Angele." And Monsieur 
Duvent, with a gamester's superstitions in such mat- 

Z20 



DOCTEUR THfiOPHILE 

ters, fully believed that his gallant act was the direct 
cause that night of the greatest run of luck in favor 
of the dealer that his bank had ever known. Miss 
Violet Bream and Mr. Claude Dunbar — that is to 
say, Ned and Polly Harrison — naturally expressed 
their sympathetic pleasure by sending an order for 
a box at the theatre where they were playing a bril- 
liant engagement: and made Dr. Theophile wretch- 
edly uncomfortable, and his Angele quite absurdly 
happy, by focussing the entire performance on them 
— as though they were royalty itself! And Mrs. 
Myrtle Vane, as on a previous notable occasion, 
nobly sacrificed her interest to her friendship and 
did not make a story out of it all for the Sunday 
paper that she served with so earnest an illiterary 
zeal. And the chef, having a nice taste in matters 
of gallantry, quite upset Dr. Theophile's digestion 
by serving to him a magnificent pudding — on the 
icing of which, done tastefully in pink sugar, was a 
harp -playing angel with prodigious wings. Be- 
neath which artistic creation was this legend in blue 
sugar letters : Son Ange gardien. 

But from the humbler element of the Casa Napo- 
leon came the demonstrations of grateful affection 
which most closely touched Dr. Theophile's heart. 
Leon, the one-eyed waiter — fortunately ignorant 
of Monsieur Duvent's floral outburst — brought 
him a single beautiful rose, and begged that he 
would give it to the beautiful lady who was glad- 
ding his life. Telesforo, the Cuban negro, with a 
most impressive air of mystery, presented him his 
own most cherished possession: a Voodoo amulet 

221 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

that was a sovereign protection against every hu- 
man and superhuman ill. And Marie, the often 
too frivolous chambermaid, quite solemnly brought 
her old grandmother to bless him; and Marie, with 
a sob in her voice, explained that the hon Dieu surely 
would give heed to this blessing from one whose 
life Dr. Theophile had saved. 

Thus did these friends of Dr. Theophile's, and 
other of his friends in the wider circle to whom I 
can but refer generally, prove to him their loving 
thankfulness. Thus was there declared to him a 
dividend upon the deposits that for half his life- 
time he had been making in the Bank of Grateful 
Hearts. 



Nobly swathed in cobwebs and extravagantly 
coated with dust, the very last bottles of the famous 
burgundy were served at Dr. Theophile's wedding 
breakfast; gracing — according to Madame's no- 
tions, sanctifying — in their maturely mellow perfec- 
tion the realization of the tenderest and the brightest 
of all the hopes to which those hopeful toasts had 
been drunk in the first bottle, young and fiery, that 
ever had come out of the bin. 

Madame's eyes dimmed a little as with her own 
hands she lifted these veterans from their long rest- 
ing-place and tenderly bestowed them in their sac- 
rificial baskets. Not that she grudged the gift that 
she was making to crown fitly Dr. Theophile's hap- 
piness — Madame came of an open-handed race, 
and her warm heart was all generosity — nor that 

22% 



DOCTEUR THfiOPHILE 

in her sadness was precisely pain. But as she turned 
away from the empty bin, over the filhng of which 
she had presided twenty years before in sanguine 
expectation of coming good fortune, she could not 
but feel a keen natural sorrow — for all that so large 
a part of her bright hopes had become realities — 
as with a curiously sudden completeness she realized 
how much of her life was gone. It is that way with 
all of us: when some sharply obtrudent fact brings 
an abrupt consciousness that, all unconsciously, we 
have drifted far past life's meridian; that the years 
which (as it seems to us) only a little while ago were 
our rosy future now are our gray past. We may 
know that we have grown mellower, richer, ten- 
derer; that we have achieved, even, a subtly per- 
fected excellence — but with a sudden shock we know 
also that this means a loss of fire and vigor: and 
the coming, presently, of the basket: and then the 
drawing of the cork. 

It would be absurd, however, even to suggest 
that any such reasoned chain of sombre reflections 
was in Madame's naturally cheery heart as she set 
in order her votive offering to Dr. Theophile's hap- 
piness. The farthest that her melancholy went 
was to regret with a lively Toulousian energy that 
she had scored twenty years to the bad since she 
and Don Anastasio had begun their happy dual 
venture in matrimony and hotel-keeping, and that 
Don Anastasio was beginning to get old. Being a 
Frenchwoman, and a Southern Frenchwoman at 
that, the thought never occurred to Madame that 

she was beginning to get old herself. 

223 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

Nor, indeed, would any reasonably mature per- 
son, with half an eye for what a plumply comfort- 
able little round woman ought to be, have ventured 
to suggest that Madame and old age even were nod- 
ding acquaintances — as she sat at that dream of a 
wedding breakfast (the making of it had cost her 
many sleepless nights, and the chef, according to 
the impudent Marie, had gone gray over it) with 
Dr. Theophile on her right hand. On that festive 
occasion, as on many previous and also on many 
subsequent festive occasions, Madame was as radi- 
ant — to quote Don Anastasio's gallant simile — as a 
budding rose! 

As to the glad youthfulness of the bride and groom, 
Madame declared that they surely had been to the 
Fountain of Youth together; and Don Anastasio 
— quoting broadly from the Siete Partidas — made 
the wiser general assertion that age cannot find lodge- 
ment in happy and wholly unselfish hearts. After 
all, though, the reasonably mature person already 
mentioned would not have drawn upon either the 
Fountain of Youth or a royal philosopher of the thir- 
teenth century to account for the youthfulness of 
two people, suddenly become supremely happy, one 
of whom was only a year worse than forty, and the 
other barely thirty-seven years old. Yet it is true 
that neither of them looked even their insignificantly 
few years. Brides, when they are happy brides, 
never do look their years; and Dr. Theophile — to 
the abiding wonder of all who knew him — had aban- 
doned his panama hat and his jaunty short frock- 
coat for a high silk hat of a dazzling shininess and 

224 



DOCTEUR THfiOPHILE 

for a coat of such opulent length that the tails of it 
almost tickled his heels! Thus resplendently ar- 
rayed, and with his crisp black beard trimmed to a 
nicety, he would have passed for thirty — as Madame 
heartily assured him in the most handsome terms. 
His own feelings in the matter — as he looked across 
the table at his Angele, seated beside Don Ana- 
stasio, and saw her with his lover's eyes precisely as 
he remembered her on the other side of those des- 
ert twenty years — ^was that Madame's compliment 
erred on the side of sincerity. She would have come 
closer to his own calculations in the premises had 
she said that he would pass for twenty-one! Don 
Anastasio throughout that genial festival glowed 
with a cheerful kindliness that fairly taxed the Siete 
Partidas to the uppermost to supply him with quo- 
tations appropriate to the expression of his benevo- 
lent thoughts. Indeed, his speech so bristled with 
the wisdom of the Wise Alonzo that it was quite a 
relief to the entire company when Colonel Withers- 
by — being unduly primed with preliminary cock- 
tails — ^went off prematurely with a toast to the 
"Doc" as "the cleanest white man, ladies and 
gentlemen, that ever I've laid eyes on," and to his 
bride as "the daisiest daisy that God ever made." 
Coming with a swish into the midst of Don Ana- 
stasio's elegant and stately phrasings of thirteenth- 
century wisdom, and fairly across the hawse of 
the Wise Alonzo, the Colonel's breezy contempora- 
neous utterance was quite in the way of a refreshing 
interpolation of strictly modern metaphors and ideas. 
But it was Alonzo the Wise, of course, who had 

225 



AT THE CASA NAPOLfiON 

the final innings: when, in its due season, the toast 
of the bride and groom was given formally by Don 
Anastasio after the glasses had been charged with 
the heroic burgundy, exquisitely fragrant, and mel- 
low with its twenty years of treasured memories 
of the sunny Dijon hills. 

I shall not attempt to give the whole of Don Ana- 
stasio's address — rather is it simpler to refer the 
reader direct to the Siete Partidas, wherein the pith 
of it, though not its warm-hearted friendliness, is 
to be found. But the very end of it was in these 
words: "Therefore I say to you that these our well- 
loved friends, who to-day are joined together by 
that first sacrament made and ordained by God 
Himself in Paradise, and who now are come after 
long sorrow into happiness, have earned by their 
right living the reward that has come to them, and 
also the grace of God's blessing — even as is declared 
in the fourth title of the ninety-seventh law of the 
First Partida of the Wise Alonzo, which readeth: 
'To do well is so great a thing, and so good, that not 
only do men by it conquer the world and compass 
the accomplishments which they desire, but also — 
even in their lifetime — they gain that which is over 
everything: the rewarding love of God.'" 



THE END 



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